


Come Together

by JStevens



Series: Coming Together [2]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: I don't know yet!, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2018-10-15 08:13:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JStevens/pseuds/JStevens
Summary: Spring has come, and eighty-some Finnish cleansers have arrived in Sweden to help assist in cleansing the railroad line between Mora and Östersund. Along with them comes one Finnish mage, who is determined to carve a place for himself among the godless heathens. No matter what it takes.[Follow up to Come To Me]





	1. Chapter 1

_It's a fight_  
_It takes so long_  
_But I've learned to hold my own_  
_So I stand_  
_And I wait in line_

        - Wait in Line, James Bay

 

 

1 EMIL

 

 

Emil swore under his breath as he put his head down on the table. The metal was cold and soothing against his skin, even if it only took the barest edge off the pulsing pain in his temples. “Listen, Astrid, I swear that I’m not blaming you,” he ground out into the radio headset, the earpiece of which was digging into one side of his face now, wedged between the hard tabletop and his skull. He couldn’t be bothered to lift his head. He was afraid he might start banging it repeatedly against the desk if he did.

“I know this wasn’t your fault. I just need it fixed. I got some of my cleansers to send a dozen more tents down from Östersund, but they don’t have any more to spare. There has to be something _somewhere_ between here and Borlänge.”

The strident voice continued in his ear as Emil squeezed his eyes shut. When a light touch brushed against the back of his neck, he thought he must be imagining it. But then the pressure changed as the fingers tapped upon the tight muscles leading from the base of his skull down to his hunched shoulders. They were too insistent to be his imagination.

Emil turned to glance behind himself and started so violently that he nearly fell out of his seat. The headset he wrenched off and dropped to the tabletop, with a noisy clatter that set off a series of shrill questions on the other end of the line. He didn't even get a proper look at the sharp face; a blurry impression of ash blond hair and wide gray eyes was all he needed to know that here at last was everything he had been missing. Emil was already on his feet, grabbing Lalli to him in an awkward one-armed hug as he muttered, “Oh, thank the gods.”

For the count of a heartbeat, he could relish the warmth of Lalli's cheek as their skin met, and he spoke in a rush. “Translate if you have to, but try to make it sound less terrible than it really is.” His voice had been pitched low, only meant to be heard by the ear beside his mouth. He wished those didn't have to be the first words he spoke to Lalli after three months apart. He wished he could kiss that ear. He inhaled sharply, silky hair brushing against his face and his lips just inches from the pulse throbbing at Lalli's neck. But there was no time for anything but the brief warning.

All too soon, Emil was pulling back. Even if he wanted to search Lalli’s face and memorize every new line to be found in it, he couldn't now. So Emil clamped down on his disappointment and pivoted to greet the small crowd of Finnish visitors, who clumped only a few steps inside the door to the radio room. At the front of the group stood their head cleanser. He clapped Teemu on the shoulder, and Emil even managed a real smile for the older cleanser.

“Teemu, I am glad to to see you." Emil spoke with care, trying to keep his words simple. "How was the winter? Did you have an easy journey?”

With his broken Swedish, the head cleanser from Finland fumbled his way through an answer before looking to Lalli to take over. The mage had served as Teemu's frequent interpreter during the Swedo-Finnish collaboration the year before, and it looked as though the old roles would be easy to fall back into. Before Emil said another word, Teemu started rattling off something in incomprehensible Finnish. Lalli spared Emil one sharp glance as he was drawn into a back-and-forth with his head cleanser in their native language. With their attention drawn away momentarily, Emil waved his hand at the Swedish lieutenant he could see hovering outside the open door.

“Lars! Get in here and help out a minute!” he hissed.

“But I don’t speak Finnish!” the other man protested as he hurried into the radio room, his chocolatey brown eyes unhappy. He may have been nearly a decade older than Emil, but there was a reason he was a lieutenant still. If there was an easy path out of some work, he would always be the first to find it, and the thought of volunteering for any task—no matter how small—seemed to be about as equally horrifying to him as the thought of taking on a troll armed with nothing but a butter knife.

“Like I do?” Emil rolled his eyes as he twisted toward Lalli, putting a hand briefly on the mage’s shoulder. He didn't let his fingers move, but he was aware of the slight warmth he could feel even through the weave of tunic.  _Focus, Emil._

“Lalli can help translate for you. Can you start walking them through where they can settle their cleansers for the moment?” The voice on the other end of the radio was still squawking through the headset, so Emil picked the hateful thing back up. “Get them comfortable in the main hall, and make sure that Tuva is getting lunch ready to go around. If anyone is interested in a tour of the area, see to it. I’ll be there just as soon as I can.”

Lifting the headset over his head and settling it around his neck for the moment, Emil finally dared to look Lalli in the eyes. Lalli frowned when he did, staring narrowly at Emil. It was clear that he knew something was going on, and Emil didn't even care to try to hide it. He was too busy filing away every impression he could: the golden afternoon light in Lalli's gray eyes, the rigid posture that he always maintained when he was feeling on edge, the smudge of dust under his left cheekbone.

The suspicion in Lalli's eyes changed to something more like bewilderment, even if the emotion only showed itself as a small wrinkle between his brows. Emil still saw it. He was quite practiced in reading the subtle shades of emotion that slid across the surface of that placid face.

Emil gave a tight smile and muttered, “I’ll explain later. Tell Teemu—just tell him that there’s been a little mix-up, but that we’re doing everything we can to get it all settled before night falls. I'll be there as soon as I possibly can.”

Then he had to turn away. Holding his free hand out, though his other was wrapped around the headset hanging from his neck, Emil shook Teemu’s hand once more as he said slowly and carefully, “I have one last thing I must do, Teemu. But you are in good hands. Lars will take care of you, then I will come join you in just a little while.” _I hope_ , Emil thought to himself, though even he doubted how likely it would be. He’d spent nearly three hours already that morning radioing back and forth to various military outposts.

Lalli summarized the message in quiet Finnish, in case Teemu might have been unclear about any part of it. The older man looked puzzled and disappointed, but he nodded. “Okay, Emil. Soon, yes?”

Emil nodded and watched the visitors being ushered out of the room. He hoped his smile didn’t look as miserable as he felt. He wanted to reach out and catch Lalli, but he didn’t. He saw Lalli's head turning slightly as he walked away, as if he considered looking back at Emil—but he thought better of it, apparently, and kept his gaze facing forward. Emil turned away himself, slumping back down at the table. He had to get this mess fixed before the end of the day.

“Astrid? Are you still here?” Emil asked even as he was still settling the headset back into place. The woman on the other end responded with an annoyed grumble. Emil sighed in relief and got back to work.

 

 

Dealing with the work disasters of the past few days had kept Emil so occupied that he hadn’t had the time to think about anything else. But being faced so unexpectedly with Lalli’s presence, right there in the same room, threated to eclipse everything else. With one ear listening to the report he was getting over the radio, Emil allowed himself to unfold the memories he'd stashed away in such a rush and remember the way Lalli had looked and felt for those brief moments.

It had been the first time Emil had gotten to see his lover since January. Nearly three months. The wait had been less painful this time than when they’d said good-bye to one another the previous fall, at least. It had been some small reassurance to know that, at the end of it, he would have Lalli back for more than half a year. And in the dull winter weeks that they'd been separated, they had exchanged frequent letters back and forth. But reading the words and imagining Lalli’s voice saying them was still nothing compared to Lalli in the flesh.

Even after six years, Lalli remained unlike anyone else Emil had ever met. He might be biased, but when Lalli was missing from Emil’s life, it was like—well, it was just like Lalli had once described to him, even if Emil hadn't realized what it meant at the time. Like a light had gone out. Like everything was dim and dull. Emil had kept plodding through each day for the past three months, but the only joy he’d found was in a new letter from Lalli arriving in the mail, or when he found something to buy in a shop that he thought Lalli would like. (These trinkets and treats he’d taken to stocking up in his apartment, ready for Lalli's next visit. And sometimes he had opened the drawer in his bedroom where Lalli had left some of his clothes and let his fingers brush across the woven cloth that had once touched the same skin as he had.)

Finally Lalli had been standing in front of him once more. The real Lalli, warm flesh and steely eyes. His hair had been shorter than the last time Emil had seen him in January. Still long enough to tie back, but just barely and already with pieces coming loose to fall around his face. His pale eyes, wide and tilted up in the corners, had missed nothing—they never did. They had looked straight through Emil with a sharp message: _You had better explain this to me later._

 _I will_ , Emil thought back at his lover, somewhere in this same building even if he couldn't see him any longer. _Gladly. If I don't, I might just lose my mind, and the real work of the project hasn’t even begun._

The reason that Emil hadn’t been able to go meet Lalli when the Finnish contingent first arrived in Sweden—the reason that it had felt like an unexpected knife in his gut to realize that Lalli was already here and Emil couldn’t even take a moment to enjoy that fact—was that someone was actively sabotaging his project.

The most recent and pressing problem had occurred when he had arrived in Orsa to find that somehow it had been “overlooked” to supply tents for the Swedish half of the work party. He had scrambled that morning to pull some favors and managed to get a few of the cleansers who looked up to him in Östersund to rush to send a dozen surplus tents down on the first train of the day. But they hadn’t been able to spare any more than that with the number of troops that were already set up at that end of the train line, and he had run into a brick wall of opposition here on the Mora side.

The entire morning had slipped away from him as he radioed different offices, tried different numbers, and worked desperately to hunt down the equipment they would need to start the project off without any delays—and without embarrassing himself hugely in front of the Finnish cleansers who had just traveled a third of the way across the Known World to assist on this project. Emil hadn’t even realized how much time had gotten away from him until Lalli’s unexpected touch had brought him back to himself.

And now he couldn’t even go with Lalli or indulge in watching him from across the same room. _But now Lalli is here, and he’s worth it_ , Emil reminded himself, though the fact had never been in any doubt in his mind. If it meant having Lalli back with him for another long summer and fall, hopefully even for longer, he could put up with this kind of shit every day for the next seven months.

It was nearly noon, according to the watch on his wrist. The train from Östersund should arrive in Mora within the hour. The Finns could be distracted for a short time with lunch. Emil took a swig of the cold coffee in front of him, grimacing at the bitter taste of the hours-old brew, and took a deep breath to launch another volley out across the radio waves, hoping to strike a blow against the unbudging bureaucracy of the Swedish army.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY. I just couldn't help myself! But I make no promises on timely updates. Or plot. This is not (meant to be) some deep angst-fest like CTM was. It is a simpler romp through what might happen one summer, because it's hard for me to let these characters go, and this is my stress relief.
> 
> So, the boys have had their crises and come to terms with the biggest of their demons. But now that they've decided to live and seize happiness for themselves, they may find that sometimes it won't simply be handed to you. And sometimes people purposely try to prevent you from taking it. But once you're done taking on your own traumas, it is time to take on the rest of the world!


	2. Chapter 2

_No, you don't have to wear your best fake smile_  
_Don't have to stand there and burn inside_  
_Oh oh oh if you don't like it_  
     - Best Fake Smile, James Bay

 

 

2 EMIL

 

 

Emil was still in the radio room in the ancient building, which the Cleansers Corps had reclaimed decades ago, when he was roused from his stupor by a second unexpected visitor. This one didn’t sneak up on him with Lalli’s silent grace, so he wasn’t quite as surprised when—after a footstep squeaked on the flooring—he half-turned in his seat to find Tuuri Hotakainen leaning in the doorway.

He offered her a tired wave, even as he continued speaking into the line to the third person he’d been transferred through to at Mora HQ on this particular call. Tuuri’s eyebrows, which had already been edging towards the bangs that swept across her forehead, threatened to disappear from view altogether. Pushing away from the doorjamb, she tiptoed across the room to ease into the chair beside him, cocking her head to the side to listen in on the conversation he was in the middle of. He didn’t bother brushing her away. He had every intention of venting to Lalli about this personal hell he’d been thrust into at the first possible chance he got, and once Lalli knew, Tuuri might as well know, too. Emil was simply saving her the step of trying to wheedle it out of her clousemouthed cousin.

“Like I already said,” Emil ground out, struggling to keep his voice neutral, “I know that the papers you got said there were only 90 people. I know that your office supplied enough tents for 90 people, and I am grateful for your assistance with that. Unfortunately, though, the fact remains that we have 124 people here in Orsa who are going to be in need of a place to sleep each night.”

Tuuri leaned on the heel of her palm and peered curiously at the papers that Emil was tapping in irritation, his pencil swinging up and down as twiddled it between his fingers.

“I _do_ understand that you can’t spare another 20 tents. I’ve been able to secure a dozen more from Östersund, but we’re still shy. If you can spare any at all, I can send someone down with a cart to collect them at once.”

Emil caught the way that Tuuri’s face lit up and he covered the mouthpiece of the headset long enough to whisper, “ _Not you_.” When she pulled a face, he pointed out, “You don’t know the way, you’re not immune, and Lalli would kill me.” But he softened the blow with a friendly shoulder bump.

Muttering to herself, Tuuri took the papers he’d been scribbling notes on and began rifling through them. She plucked the pencil out of his fingers next, and when Emil was left on hold waiting for the latest bureaucrat to ‘ask around’ for him, he switched off the microphone and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Calculating,” she said simply, flipping back and forth between papers. “This is the full list of the Finnish members, right?”

When he nodded, she set the paper aside and rifled through the rest of the pile. “Don’t you have a list of the Swedish cleansers?”

He shook his head. “It’s a long story, but it ends with 'no.' Why? Would having one help?”

“It might.” Tuuri peered at his rushed notes, and started adding her own. “So, you said there are 124 people total, right? You’re quite sure that’s the right total?” When he nodded silently, Tuuri asked, “And you have how many tents?”

“Fifty here, another dozen en route from Östersund. They should be here in the early afternoon, hopefully.”

“So, 62 total. That’s enough for 124 people.”

Emil stared at her. “What?” He shook his head, trying to brush away the simple calculation. “No, you don't understand. I got 34 more Swedish cleansers added to the project at the last minute, but only a dozen extra tents. That’s only enough for 24 of the Swedish cleansers. Never mind the lieutenants.”

Tuuri gave him a look. “Are the lieutenants not included in the 124 total?”

“Well, no, they are.” Emil shook his head again. “But they normally expect to get a private tent to themselves, without having to share. And so does the doctor, and project leaders like Teemu and me—though I don’t mind sharing, of course. Plus, we don’t make men and women share tents. It’s a long project, and relationships can get strained. We don’t want to add on to that. So we need more tents than it might look like at first glance.”

Her eyes were already back on the papers, but there was a smile on Tuuri’s face. “But of course you wouldn’t object to sharing with a certain male member of the project. How convenient.” She didn’t see Emil’s flushing, though, because she was busy noting letters beside each name on the list of Finnish members. She started drawing little arcing lines between pairs. Emil realized quickly enough that she was pairing off female and male members, apparently trying to make rough plans for who could share tents.

With the few moments he might have before someone could come back on the line, Emil slipped off the headset and jumped up from his seat. Sticking his head out into the hallway, he looked both ways but saw no one. “Anyone around?” he called down the echoing hall that had once been part of the Orsa Link offices, according to the faded sign that still stood over the front door. He kept glancing back in at the headset he’d left on the desk, but luckily, he heard footsteps coming down the hall before it could start squawking again.

It was one of his new cleansers, though he had no idea of the boy’s name. None of the cleansers he’d been able to pull were from Östersund, so they were all strangers to him. But after nearly two years as a captain, he was used to giving orders to strangers.

“I need a list of all the cleansers in your unit: names and genders both. Go to your lieutenant and tell them, then find the other lieutenant and pass the message on. And I need them _now_ , so quickly please.”

When Emil ducked back into the room, he yanked the headset back on, leaving one earpiece tucked behind his ear so that he could hear Tuuri. Then he looked at her expectantly, because he had nothing else to pin his hopes on but her.

“So, if we assume that everyone can be persuaded to share tents, at least for the time being,” she said in an absent manner as her eyes and hand kept moving across the paper. “Then we need 43 tents for the Finnish members. If you put together the 83 cleansers, plus Lalli and me, we have 13 women and 72 men. That’s 43 tents, but one will have a lone woman in it.”

Emil studied the scribbles now covering half the page. “You can add in the doctor and me and the three cooks. The other four are all women.”

Tuuri jotted down the numbers, then tapped the pencil against her chin. “So that brings us up to 46 tents. Two more for the three female cooks and the one female doctor, if they’ll agree to share, and one more for you. But now we have two tents that only have one person in them.”

Before she could go on, there was a crackle of static and the radio line picked up again. Emil flicked up the switch that would transmit his voice. “Yes? This is Captain Västerström. Were you able to find anything?”

The tone of voice could have told Tuuri all she needed to know, but the disgruntled woman on the other end was also speaking so loudly that every word came pouring out of the headphone loud and clear. She busied herself with more figures.

When Emil ended the radio call, he pulled the headphones off and threw them across the table. Then he picked them back up and inspected them for damage, muttering, “I probably shouldn’t have done that. This equipment is expensive.”

A soft hand landed atop his, and Emil looked up at Tuuri. “How does it look?” he asked her.

She slid the paper in front of him. “If your numbers are right, and there are 34 more cleansers on the Swedish side, then we need either 16 or 17 more tents. If you have an odd number of men and women, then we can pair them up with the two singles we were left with from the first group. That would mean we need exactly 62 tents, and we’re fine as long as everyone will share. But if there are an even number of women and men, then we’re still left with two singles and a need for 63 tents total.”

Emil stared for several long moments, then commanded Tuuri to walk him through the whole thing step-by-step once more, because he couldn’t believe it. When she had, Emil let his heavy head fall into his hands. “So you mean...we might actually be okay? I wasted most of my day getting verbally abused by half of the Swedish army for no reason? I missed out on getting to meet you guys at the ferry, and getting to spend the last five hours with Lalli, for nothing?”

The small dusty room was silent for a moment, as it seemed Tuuri was having trouble figuring out as gentle a way as possible to agree. “Well, depending on the Swedish numbers, we may still need more tents tonight. And eventually you'll want to get extras anyway, to pacify the people who were expecting to get private tents, and in case any equipment gets damaged. So it wasn’t _all_ a waste. At least you’ve crossed off a lot of places to call when that time comes.”

Emil burst into tired laughter, his head hanging low, and Tuuri asked, “Didn’t you even look at the numbers yourself?”

“Tuuri, I’m running on nothing but coffee and fumes right now,” he admitted. “The past three days have been one disaster after another, and I never thought past the fact that we had 34 more people on the project and so we must need at least 17 more tents. And more like 20, to keep the lieutenants happy.”

“Do you think they’ll accept sharing?” she asked, as a young Swedish cleanser slipped into the room. It wasn’t the same one that Emil had caught before, but this one _was_ holding two slips of paper. Emil could have kissed him—but there was a different man somewhere in this same miserable outpost whom he would much rather be kissing.

“Are those the lists?” Emil asked as he got to his feet and hurried over. The younger man nodded and held them out as his wide eyes moved between Emil and Tuuri. Ah. So, he was one of _those_ types. The starry-eyed young ones who had read about the expedition to the Silent World and been so thrilled by the romance of adventure that they’d signed right up for the army. Emil tried not to sigh as he passed the papers over to Tuuri to check.

“Sir, can I just say that I’m really so glad that our squad got called up to help you with this project? I can’t believe how lucky we were. We’ll definitely make it to Sveg first!”

The kid was beaming at him and looked maybe 18. If Emil was feeling generous. He wasn't particularly.

“You're fresh out of training?” Emil asked him, though he already knew the answer. The kid was smart enough to look sheepish when he nodded. “Well, it should be a good experience for you. Try to learn something from the Finnish cleansers.”

Tuuri shot him a grin, though the young cleanser seemed surprised by the idea that he should learn anything from the Finns. Emil had a hard time trying to smile back. It was painful to be reminded so acutely of himself before the expedition—thinking that no other nation in the Known World could have anything to teach him. He'd been a conceited tit, and he was lucky it hadn't killed him. He hoped it wouldn't kill this kid.

 _At least he'll have Lalli to look out for him, too._ Maybe this project would give the naïve kid in front of him the chance to grow, as the expedition had for Emil. “What’s your name?” Emil asked. Not because he wanted to, but because he knew he had to start getting to know the poor fools he'd dragged into this mess with him.

"Elis," the boy said smartly. "Elis Anderson."

"Glad to have you, Elis. It's going to be a very busy year, but we should make it as long as everyone gives their all."

The reassuring smile that he was trying to fake wasn't helped by Tuuri clearing her throat behind him and saying, "Um, Emil? Bad news."

He let his eyes fall shut long enough to wish he were anywhere else in the world, Known or Silent. But then he wouldn't be in the same building as Lalli, who was still out there somewhere and waiting for him to get away. "The numbers are even?" Emil asked, already knowing the answer.

"They are. So the way I see it, you've got a couple of options." Tuuri held up a hand when he turned to look at her, and she ticked off fingers as she spoke. "Option one: stay in here and keep trying to call around to other offices to get some more tents. Which may or may not result to anything. Option two, if you're determined to set out according to schedule tomorrow, is you leave someone behind."

"Who am I supposed to leave behind?" Emil asked in disbelief.

"Well, if you don't leave a couple of people behind, then the last odd man and woman need to share a tent. And that's option three. And if you wanted to go that route, then the easiest solution...would probably be for me and Lalli to stay together."

Emil didn't take even a second to consider that option. "You're right. I guess I have to leave you behind here."

Tuuri reached across the space between them to slap him on the arm. "That's not what I said. Though I'm happy to stay behind a bit and try to make more calls for you." She looked around the small room as if there might be someone hiding behind the radio equipment. "Don't you have anyone here to handle logistics? We had a crew of nearly a dozen people in Eno to take care of the project last year."

Before Emil could decide how honest he wanted to be when there was an impressionable young kid still standing there and hanging on their every word, that selfsame youngster spoke up. "Is there some kind of problem with the tents? If people need to sleep together, I’d be happy to share with anyone. Especially you two. I'd love to spend even one night with you two. It’d be an honor."

Tuuri made a choked sound that seemed to be a failed attempt to keep from laughing. "Oh. Well, that’s very flattering. But you’re a bit young for my tastes. And I don't know that Emil is interested in a threesome."

The kid blinked, then seemed to mentally review what he'd said and realize the implications for the first time. "Oh! I didn’t mean that I—that you—that we three—! Oh god..."

Tuuri looked away to smirk at Emil, and this boy Elis wouldn't have noticed anyway because he had his eyes screwed shut in embarrassment. His face looked hot enough to cleanse the next hundred meters of forest simply by looking at it. But Emil had no patience left to even try to help him. He'd spent half the day in this tiny room, hadn't had a thing to eat or drink but one stale cup of coffee, and somewhere in this building, the man he had missed like a starving man missed food was within his reach for the first time in months.

"That's it!" Emil sprang up from the chair and stretched his arms over his head with a groan. "I can't take any more! Let's go meet up with Teemu and everyone. I'll try to get someone else to take over for me here, and if we can't figure anything else out—well, at least we have some sort of backup plan." He waved a finger at Tuuri. "A  _temporary_ backup plan."  _I'm not letting you steal my summer with Lalli,_ his eyes warned her and hers twinkled back at him knowingly.

He used his outstretched hand to ruffle her hair like he would do to his younger cousins. Emil loved Tuuri, even if it was not the way that he loved her cousin, and he would have been glad to have her along on this project in any event. But with the way things were going, he could already see that he was going to need her for a lot more than her cheery attitude. When Tuuri was determined to do a thing, nothing could stop her. Not even her older brother, who was twice her size and by all accounts one of the most powerful mages in Finland. Tuuri Hotakainen might be the only person stationed here who he could rely on to keep this project from running into the ground—even if someone else clearly wanted it to do so.

Slinging an arm around her round shoulders, he steered her out of the room. His heart had already sped up at the thought that he was going to find Lalli at last. Ignoring it, Emil leaned over to tell the woman at his side, "Have I mentioned how glad I am I to see you? I'm very, very glad to see you, Tuuri."

She laughed, and they left the radio room behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are we going to go see Lalli at last? Let's go see Lalli!


	3. Chapter 3

_I breathe in slow to compose myself_  
_But the bleeding heart I left on the shelf_  
_Started speeding round, beating half to death_  
_'Cause you're here, and you're all mine_  
     - Incomplete, James Bay

 

 

3 LALLI

 

 

Lalli noticed as soon as Emil and Tuuri slipped into the cavernous room and made their way toward the end where he and Teemu stood. He didn't stop translating the latest question from the Swedish lieutenant they had been left with, but his eyes followed Emil as the other man approached. Once the blond's gaze found his, it was like a light had been flicked on somewhere behind his eyes. Emil's entire face lit up, and it seemed as though the sun had just dawned inside the large, gloomy building.

He knew that Emil had meant to keep the exact nature of their relationship from becoming public knowledge. Emil worried it would be harder to convince his countrymen that he truly believed Lalli's skills as a mage could be a benefit to the Swedish army if they also knew that Lalli happened to be Emil's lover.

Lalli knew that this worried Emil because Emil had confided the fact to him in December. More than once. Emil liked to talk about the things that worried him or the way he felt about things, and Lalli found that he oddly didn't mind listening when it was Emil. He'd been doing it since before he could even understand the words that came spilling from the Swede when he fretted and got that crease between his brows that Lalli finally had the right to smooth down with his fingers.

Still. The point was that Emil was kidding himself if he thought no one was going to figure out what it meant when he looked Lalli's way with that kind of expression. And yet Lalli couldn't summon the scorn that his hopeless, awkward Swede probably deserved. Instead he listened with his head cocked toward Teemu as the older cleanser gave his own questions about the plans for the next day. He repeated the questions in Swedish as Emil approached with a tired grin playing around his mouth, as though getting to see Lalli passing along messages was the highlight of his day. The easy way that Emil held himself and the familiar humor in his sky-blue eyes made something deep in Lalli's stomach hunger to grab the other man and drag him away into the woods until they were away from all the watching eyes. Somewhere Lalli could have Emil all to himself, because only he should get to see that smile. It belonged to him.

He blinked. Even the momentary removal of Emil from his sight was enough for him to reign in the insane urges. He hadn't been this bothered the first time they'd been reunited after months apart. But then, he'd had Emil all to himself then. And he'd been half-sick with the fear that he would arrive in Sweden to find everything had fallen to pieces. His faith in Emil was stronger now. After nearly a year, he could finally believe that Emil might really want this to last as much as he did, for as long as he did.

 _And still we are standing in front of a crowd of a hundred people who should not know any of that._ Lalli's mood was growing fouler by the minute, frustration gnawing at him as insistently as the urge to leap on Emil and hang the fact that they had an audience. Emil, real and alive and warm, was standing within his arm's reach and Lalli couldn't even touch him. His eyes narrowed, but he doubted his face would let anything slip to any of the others. And all eyes were trained on Emil and not him. After all, Emil was supposed to be in charge here and he'd been missing from the moment the Finns had arrived in this terrible outpost on the edge of Scandinavia's capital.

Orsa was the northernmost area cleansed on this end of the Mora-Östersund line, but it wasn't regularly inhabited. Most of the buildings had been torn down, blown up, or removed, as the Swedes tended to do, and high fences put up around the former town to keep it safe from troll infestation. This large concrete husk of a building was one of the few that had been left standing—along with a small house for the guards who were stationed here on weekly shifts. From what the lieutenant had already explained, these guards were responsible for opening the gates at the scheduled times each day, so that the trains coming to and from Mora could pass between the cleansed area and the wild.

The stretch of train tracks between Orsa and Åsarna, the last cleansed area south of Östersund, were not truly wild, though. Not like the disaster-zone that the Dalahästen ran through. The Swedes managed to keep at least a half-dozen meters around the tracks cleared for most of the run, but they didn't consider it truly a cleansed area until a safe perimeter was established and could be maintained and protected with electrified fencing. So this year, the Finns and Swedes were due to work together to expand the zones around the train line to the acceptable 25-meter minimum expected per side so that electric fencing could be installed along the whole line, just as had been done between Mora and Björköfjärden.

Teemu had noticed Emil's approach, and he nudged Lalli with an elbow. "Here he is. Find out what is going on. This lieutenant has been useless, but there's clearly some sort of problem. I want to know what it is before we get dragged into some sort of mess. Emil will tell it to us straight."

Lalli hoped he was right. He didn't pass on the message verbatim, but he looked between Tuuri and Emil as they stopped in front of his group and asked, "Is there anything I should explain to Teemu?"

He watched as Tuuri looked up at Emil, probably unsure if she should answer or defer to him. It seemed they must have settled things to some extent, if they were both here now, and Lalli was glad at least that he'd sent her to go find out what was going on and help. There hadn't been much else Lalli could do, despite the alarming greeting Emil had given him. Not as long as Teemu expected him to trot along after him as his interpreter.

Seeing Emil at last after the miserable ferry from Finland, then half a day riding trains across Sweden, had not gone in any of the ways Lalli might have imagined. He'd been ready to fend Emil off, expecting he would be terrible as usual at keeping his emotions hidden. He hadn't expected to find Emil slumped over a desk and looking defeated. Seeing that misery made Lalli's skin itch with the need to do  _something_ to alleviate it. It was an instinct that he'd never been able to explain, but before Emil had even been his friend—before Emil had been anything but a bewildering foreign stranger—the need had been there: the need to reassure him with a pat on the shoulder when he looked lost or smooth down his hair when he looked at his wits' end. When he'd seen the tired lines of Emil's shoulders, the hand buried in his short blond hair as he cradled his own head, Lalli hadn't even thought before reaching out toward the exposed skin of Emil's neck.

Lalli knew that he held a part of Emil that no one else could touch, but he couldn't decide if that made this moment better or worse. Even now, standing opposite Emil among the crowd, he could practically feel the Swede reaching out to him, just as lost spirits sometimes reached out to him, sensing that he could help them find peace. But Emil was in charge of the mass of soldiers filling this husk of a building, picking over the remains of their lunch and watching with varying degrees of curiosity to see what the captain had come to say. Lalli crossed his arms across his waist, gripping his elbows to have something to hold on to.

"We had a bit of trouble with supplies," Emil explained, looking from Lalli to Teemu, even though he surely knew that Teemu would only understand a fraction of what he said. "Tents, to be specific. Tuuri helped figure things out so that we have enough space for everyone to sleep tonight, but I'm afraid everyone is going to need to share. At least temporarily."

After Lalli passed the message along in Finnish, Teemu scratched at his chin. "So the Swedish army failed to provide tents for everyone? This project has been in the planning for over a year. How does that happen?"

When the question reached Emil, he grimaced. "The units are divided into two arms, one working their way south from Östersund and the other moving north from Mora. But the, uh, initial split seemed less than ideal. I asked for more troops to join us here in the south, but it seems that word of the change did not reach everyone who needed to know." Lalli translated the message, growing more and more baffled by what was going on. Teemu also seemed disturbed, but luckily the old man was discreet enough not to ask for more details while they were arrayed in front of every last member of the project, all hearing the message in both Finnish and Swedish.

"I see. I'm sure we can talk more about that later. Why don't we focus now on what our work plans are for the coming days?"

As Lalli repeated the message in Swedish, Teemu slapped Emil on the shoulder and led him to a table to sit. Lalli trailed after them, and Tuuri fell in beside him. He looked at her for a moment, and she muttered in Finnish, "Don't ask. It's a total mess from what I could gather."

The large room was packed, though most of the cleansers seemed to have finished eating already. The contingent of Swedes, who all seemed very young, weren't doing much to hide their curiosity. They stared over their cups at the Finnish cleansers and watched Emil in expectation. Lalli hoped that Emil realized what a captive audience he had, but he wouldn't speak up unless it looked like there was a problem.

Even as he watched, though, Emil grabbed one of the young female sergeants and gave her some sort of instruction, nodding back in the direction he'd come from. He waved Lalli and Tuuri closer. "Tuuri, can you take Tove here and walk her through things? You can make sense of my notes. See if we can get further today, before we call it quits."

"Of course, Emil," Tuuri said smartly, gesturing for the other girl to follow her and easily taking control of the situation despite the fact that she should be a stranger here. "Tove, was it? Come with me. I'll explain what we've been up to."

Lalli's eyes followed them as they disappeared back down the same hall that led to the radio room. A warm hand took him by the elbow with intimate familiarity. He felt some tension seep out of his shoulders, and he turned to look back at Emil.

"I hope you don't mind if I steal you to act as our interpreter?" Emil asked quietly, the smile in his voice doing even more to make Lalli want to lean into him. A callused thumb stroked along the sensitive skin in the crook of his elbow. _Damn it, Emil,_ he thought, not really angry at all,  _you're not helping with any pretense that we're just two soldiers who have worked together before._

"No problem," he agreed with a cool look, freeing his arm from Emil's grip with a slight twist. There was a moment in which uncertainty flickered in Emil's eyes, and Lalli had to fight the urge to roll his own. "I'm sure Teemu wants to hear more," he reminded Emil with a hard look. "So that we can wrap up for the day. Then _everyone_ will have a bit of time to unwind."

Lalli could tell that the Swede had understood him from the way his lips twitched into a small smile. They had to get through whatever duties were expected of them both before they would ever get any time alone to themselves.

"I look forward to it then," Emil muttered under his breath as Lalli brushed past him, and that quiet voice sent a thrill down Lalli's spine. This day could not end soon enough.

They settled down at a table, just the three of them. Emil explained in more detail the division of the two arms between the north and south, and how they would both be working their way toward Sveg in the middle. It was a lot of ground to cover in a season, especially when working over the summer. Regular cleansing operations were limited to spring and fall whenever possible, so the beasts were at least marginally less active than in the high summer. But huge projects like this were another matter. Sweden had committed nearly 200 cleansers to the project, and Finland had sent close to a hundred as well.

"But we only have two units here from the Swedish Cleansers Corps. That's just 35 cleansers, including myself. And both units are fresh from training," Emil admitted, sounding reluctant. It wasn't like he would have been able to hide it—half the the young cleansers filling the room looked like they probably didn't even need to shave yet. And that wasn't because they were the women, either.

"So the majority of the Swedish forces are not here," Teemu mused, once he heard Lalli's translation. Emil looked grim as he studied the head cleanser's face to read his reaction.

The captain turned and waved at a woman who looked around Tuuri's age or maybe a little older. "Mira! Can you grab us the maps?"

The dark-skinned woman threw a quick salute and hurried off down the hall toward the offices. She was back in minutes, with her arms around a stack of thick paper maps. She stopped beside Emil and dropped them onto the table.

"This is Sergeant Berglund," Emil explained, his hands busy sorting through the maps. "She works with the first unit. Under Lars. I mean Lieutenant Nyman." Lalli managed not to make a face as he shared that bit of information. The lieutenant had not impressed them during the short hour that he'd been forced to guide them through Orsa after their arrival, and he had found a way to slither off without anyone noticing as soon as Emil had arrived. Even Lalli hadn't noticed exactly when he'd slipped away—though he blamed Emil for distracting him.

"Do you need anything else, Captain?" the woman asked. Her smart tone at least already made her seem an improvement over her lieutenant. Lalli filed that information away in case he ever needed to talk to anyone among the Swedish group and Emil wasn't available.

Emil had found the map he wanted and was unfolding it across the table as he said absently, "No, that's fine. Thank you, Mira."

The map was all that Lalli saw as the woman presumably walked back to the table she'd been sitting at before. His eyes were already busy scanning the paper, taking note of the town names, roads, and landmarks. Emil had to nudge him to get his attention, and Lalli realized that he had missed the conversation continuing on around him. "What?"

Emil at least tried not to grin. Lalli gave him a little credit for that. But amusement was dancing in his eyes. "This is where we are, in Orso," Emil explained. He pointed at the map, but Lalli knew where to look without his help. Even if he hadn't ridden the train to and from Östersund the previous winter, he'd had enough time to decipher the map in front of him. "Sveg is here," Emil went on, and Lalli began repeating the words in Finnish even as he looked over the route. "It's about 120 kilometers from here to Sveg, the point where we expect to link up with the northern flank. They've got about 100 kilometers to come down, so they'll likely make it there before us."

There were several tense seconds of silence after Lalli finished translating the words for Teemu. He glanced at the old man, who was in effect his commanding officer for the length of this project, even if Lalli's position was outside the scope of any normal collaboration of this nature. There had never before been a Finnish mage joining a Swedish cleansing effort.

"So with smaller numbers than the northern flank, and smaller numbers than we had even last year, we are expected to cover four times the distance as we did in Eno."

When Lalli repeated the words in Swedish, he saw Emil wince before he nodded. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but this year will be different in a number of ways. We will not need to dedicate any of our time to building fences, for one. No making sure the timber is neatly limbed to be used for construction, no need to dig meters down into the hard soil for post holes, which constantly occupied at least a third of our crews last year. We also don't have to waste time building walled camps every month or so. We'll set up sensors at several ranges, and we have temporary fencing that we put up around our sites. It is tied to the sensors, and if one is tripped, a current is run through it from our portable generators."

Lalli wasn't sure if the words were having much effect on Teemu, who had crossed his arms and closed his eyes as he listened.

"We spent, what?" Emil asked rhetorically, "At least one week out of every month building camps last year. Not to mention all the troops constantly occupied by building secure wooden fences to keep the corridor safe. Comparing the two as if they were the same would be, well, nonsensical."

Emil looked at him, his eyebrows quirked in uncertain question. Lalli thought he was trying to ask whether Lalli thought he should keep pushing or wait for Teemu to say something. If he wanted Lalli's opinion, he would have stopped pushing minutes before. He shook his head slightly, and Emil clamped his lips shut. They both looked at Teemu to see what the old cleanser had to say.

"No fences," Teemu mused, his eyes still shut. "Not even around camps. Putting our trust in your devices to keep us safe." He shook his head and opened his eyes at last. "I do not much like this plan, Emil."

"It is standard procedure in Sweden," Emil insisted once he heard the translation, sounding surprised that this was the point that Teemu was pushing back against. He looked to Lalli for support. "We are not choosing to depend on the sensors because we are in a hurry. We would have been doing so regardless."

After Lalli translated the assurance, he added on his own message in Finnish. "We did also depend on such sensors during our expedition into the Silent World years ago. They are reliable. They kept the crew safe at night, even when I was away scouting. The Swedes have no mages, so they are forced to depend on such machines, but they seem to keep them alive. Their cleansers have a longer history than our own, and if this method did not work, they would have died out long ago."

Emil was giving him an amused look. Even he could tell that Lalli must have said more than what he himself had told Teemu, and Lalli felt the weight of his faith: Emil trusted that whatever Lalli might have said, he was helping make things better.  _I have to do what I can. This project can't fail._

Teemu considered for several minutes. Emil opened his mouth once as though to say more, and Lalli stilled him with a brief touch of two fingers on the back of his hand. Emil smiled nervously in thanks as Teemu looked out over the crowd of cleansers, mostly his own. "So we set out with no walls to protect us, a handful of the greenest recruits that Sweden has to offer, 90 of my best cleansers, and a single mage."

"Don't forget me," Tuuri interrupted, arriving back after apparently wrapping up whatever task Emil had sent her on. She shoved her cousin closer to Emil to make a space for herself at the table, then settled onto the bench with a little wiggle.

Teemu gave her a tolerating look for her cheek. "And thus we are supposed to cover 120 kilometers in less than eight months. Fantastic."


	4. Chapter 4

_Get out, get out, while you still can_  
_Don't let the night slip through your hands_  
_The world is wide from where you stand_  
_So get out, get out while you still can_  
     - Get Out While You Can, James Bay

 

 

4 LALLI 

 

 

The crowd milled about, the Finns still seeming uncertain of what was expected of them in this strange country and the Swedes seeming uncertain simply because they had never been in the field before. Emil was standing at the front of the crowd, between Teemu and Tuuri. His two lieutenants were also nearby, though Lalli had not been pleased to find that one of them was the same woman Eva that he had clashed with the previous year.

An hour or so after lunch, a cart full of tents had arrived and everyone had spilled outside to get their assignments. Tuuri had naturally taken point, some sort of list grasped in her hands as she stood between the taller figures of Emil and Teemu at the far end of the scraggly field. Lalli was glad to be left out of it all, and he stayed close to the door they had all come through, leaning against the old building. So far, the temptation to watch Emil even a little longer was winning out over his natural instinct to get away from the camp and all its people. He had been itching to get away for hours already, but he stayed and watched Emil give a little speech, as Tuuri translated for the majority of the audience who didn't understand more than few words of Swedish.

It was not a bad speech. There was a bit of that gallows humor that Sigrun had taught Emil, as well as that self-deprecating charm that came naturally to him. He put the nervous young cleansers at ease and had most of them smiling at times; even a few of the Finns cracked a smile or two when Tuuri translated his words with her impish grin. Emil explained that it was going to be a hard project, and a long one, but that the Swedish units had a rare opportunity to learn not only from more experienced cleansers but to learn unique skills that their neighbors had and the Swedish army did not. "You all learned a lot in your last several months of training, but now you will get the chance to learn things that you never would normally get exposed to, no matter how long you might train in Sweden alone."

With that bit of bolstering flattery in place, Emil had turned his attention to the Finnish cleansers. As Tuuri helped him reach out to them, he talked about how he recognized many from the previous year and what a success the project in Eno had been. He expressed his wishes that this year's project would be an even greater success and pave the way for even more collaborations in the future. His eyes found Lalli across the heads of all those cleansers for a moment, and Lalli smirked slightly. No one was looking at him anyway. He might as well let Emil enjoy it.

Given the grin with which Emil set about his next task—the unglamorous work of giving out tent assignments and distributing equipment—it seemed Emil had indeed liked it. Lalli held the little buzz of pleasure in his chest as he continued to watch the various units shuffle about, collecting tents and gathering packs and finding spaces in the brush to either side of the train tracks where they could pitch their tents for that night.

Lalli already knew he would be sharing with Tuuri. She had managed to tell him that much on their way outside. Likely he should be collecting a tent himself, getting it set up while she was still trapped at the front passing messages back and forth between Finnish and Swedish speakers. But he still didn't move from his spot to do so. He was in no hurry to embrace the fact that he would be sharing a tent with Tuuri instead of Emil. He might as well spend the entire night out in the woods if that were to be the case.

 _No. You might not 'as well.'_  

Frowning, Lalli caught the errant thought and crushed it. The idea of wandering alone through the new landscape sounded as welcome as a cool breeze on a stifling summer day. But it would be stupid, staying up the entire night just to explore, when he would be expected to work all the next day as well. He couldn't afford to be stupid.

Lalli had one real job on this project, and it was to show what a mage had to offer. His abilities as a scout were secondary. He should save his energy for the day, when he would be constantly on alert for dangerous presences. He would not let a single cleanser fall this summer. None of them should ever get more than a scratch. He had to make sure of that, if he wanted to convince that woman major of Emil's that she should pull whatever strings she could to make sure that he would be a permanent part of Emil's projects.

Which was why he would not stay out all night in the woods. It was why he would obediently take the tent with Tuuri and get a full night's rest before the real work began tomorrow. But it didn't mean that he couldn't use what was left of the day—and so when smells of food started wafting out of the building and people began to make noise about dinner, he caught Emil's eye once more. It was surprisingly easy. Emil seemed to have never lost sight of him, his eyes going to Lalli every few minutes, no matter what else he was doing.

Lalli lifted one hand and gestured with it, moving his finger in a circle and nodding toward the gate at the edge of Orso. The amused look on Emil's face as he nodded made something seem to shift in the pit of Lalli's stomach, and he turned away before anyone else might notice the silent message passing between them. It still snatched his breath away. Knowing that Emil  _understood_ —understood his need to get away and simply not be among so many people—and more than that accepted it. It was more than Lalli had thought possible for years.

And as he moved to slip inside the building once again, he saw the warmth on Emil's face shift back to a tired, polite smile as someone else came to talk to him. That warm look had only existed for Lalli to see. It was his. Because Emil was his, and Lalli was special to him.

 

 

The cooks were easy to sneak up on, busy as they were with their dinner preparations. When one of them turned to find Lalli hovering in the doorway only a few steps away, she nearly dropped a huge bowl of peeled potatoes.

"Tuva!" the woman shrieked, grabbing at the bowl that was inches from slipping through her fingers. Lalli darted forward, sliding a hand beneath to bowl to keep it from falling. He helped raise it back up, cocking an eyebrow at the woman to confirm if she had it securely or not.

She got her burden back under control and set it on the table with hands that shook slightly. Those she hid in a towel, rubbing them dry in the rough folds. "Lord, but that nearly stopped my heart of fright! It's one of the Finns, Tuva. What are we to do with him?"

Another woman came stomping over. She was shorter than the one Lalli had first surprised, but older and undeniably in charge. She peered up at him with black-blue eyes, and he felt as though he was being examined by a crow or some other messenger from the world of the dead. A third woman watched all of this happening with a stony expression, looking unimpressed as she continued to stir whatever was in the bowl in her arm. 

"Feed him, I hope," Lalli said, speaking up in a blunt tone. The little one's face slackened, the wrinkles that had been bunched at her eyes and puckering mouth all falling loose for a moment in her surprise.

Then she cackled. "Well, Liv, you heard the boy! Better feed him." She looked Lalli from head to toe and shook her head. "Looks like he hasn't been fed proper a day in his life. Skin and bones. Is that how they make you all there in Finland?"

Lalli shook his head. After a moment, he found the words to say, "No. Just me. But I'd be happy if you could spare something I can take and go."

The first one, a head taller and a decade or two younger, put her hand on her hips. One still clutched the towel, he noticed. "It seems you can talk properly enough. Why did you go sneaking up on me then?"

She was scowling at him, not as quick to laugh as her elder seemed to be. Lalli blinked, not quite sure what to make of this treatment.  _They don't know you,_ he reminded himself. "I am a scout. I don't know any other way to move." He paused a moment. "Should I try to knock something over next time?"

The old one—Tuva, most likely—cawed with laughter again. Lalli was nonplussed at making a stranger laugh so, but perhaps if he kept dealing with them like he might Emil, he could get the trio of crones to like him. It would make his life easier if he could grab food without having to bother with crowds and lines and the misery of  _socializing_. The cook staff in Finland all knew better than to expect much from scouts, and especially night scouts. They overlooked him slipping into their kitchens and grabbing enough to keep him going while he was on the move. These would be good allies to have, if he could bring himself to be nice.

"I'm sorry I surprised you," he haltingly apologized. "I want to go out scouting, while everyone eats. Before we will set out tomorrow. Do you have anything I could take with me on the way?"

Clucking at him, the head crone turned to her work table and pawed at a covered basket. She pulled out a couple of end crusts from the bread he recognized from lunch. They were hard and flaked off crumbs when she pushed them into his hands, followed by a small apple that gave just a little too much beneath his fingers. It would be mealy, he knew, and the kitchen space was filled with the savory scent of the hot food cooking in the large bubbling pots.

"You sure this'll do you?" The knowing glint in the old woman's eye told Lalli that she saw his hunger as keenly as he felt it. He nodded nonetheless.

_Winter will be a time for such things. When Emil and I can spend every evening in that apartment again, indulging in luxuries like slow meals and long nights. Now is the time for work._

 

 

Slipping his rifle higher on his shoulder, Lalli shoved the last bite of bread into his mouth. The sun was getting lower, but twilight was still an hour away at least. He turned toward the gate, skirting around the scattered cleansers who were starting to make their way toward their dinners. Even if his internal compass hadn't told him which way to go, it would have been easy enough to tell. The temporary headquarters were on the very edge of the cleansed area and the fences were visible from the front door.

Lalli saw the kid when he was maybe 30 meters away. His feet automatically stepped back without him thinking; he moved quietly enough out of habit that the boy hadn’t noticed him yet. A quick glance from side to side confirmed what he already knew, though. The metal chain fences surrounding the cleansed area were tall and quite possible electrified, if he knew the Swedes. Even if they weren’t, though, he shouldn’t try to sneak away or hop a fence.

If Lalli was going to make his way here in Sweden, he couldn’t always avoid notice as his instincts demanded. If no one was even aware that he was around and helping, that Swedish major would have no reason to agree to her end of the bargain and help him find a more permanent position. He would do his job properly, with all the pride that it deserved. Until the ignorant Swedes realized how much they needed him. Emil already did.

With that thought burning warmly inside him, Lalli strode toward the gate. The kid—who was probably 17 or 18, but who looked terribly young to Lalli with just the handful of years separating them—finally noticed him once Lalli started striding alongside the railroad with bold, purposeful motion.

“Oh god, it’s one of the Finns. What am I going to do?”

The idiot was stupid enough to mutter out loud in his despair as he looked past Lalli, as if hoping that help would be arriving right behind the Finnish interloper who was apparently his worst nightmare.

“I hope you’re going to open the gate,” Lalli replied as he drew closer, answering the question that had never been directed at him anyway. “I’d like to head out and check the area a bit before we get started tomorrow.”

The horror on the boy’s face was almost comical. If Emil had been by his side, Lalli might have been amused by it. But since Emil was not at his side, he was feeling much less generous with the universe. Now he was just annoyed. “Y-you speak Swedish?” the young cleanser stuttered in a tiny voice.

“No, clearly not." Lalli sighed. "Will you let me pass?”

Lalli watched with merciless gray eyes as the boy twisted his hands around the barrel of his rifle, looking back once into the small guardhouse behind him and then again to the building that Lalli had come from. “I’m not really supposed to open the gate. Only the train guards do, and only when a train is due. And besides, it’s dangerous to go out there alone—and it’s getting dark, too—and...uh...hrm...”

The small voice faltered and fell silent as Lalli’s eyes narrowed. When he spoke, Lalli’s voice was flat but not precisely unkind. He was making an effort, and he hoped that someone—even if only one of his own gods—noticed and appreciated that fact. “I am a night scout. It is not dangerous for me. And Emil knows where I am going.”

“Emil?” the boy repeated stupidly.

“Emil Västerström. Your captain?”

Lalli was beginning to form a clearer idea why Emil looked so ready to tear his hair out.

“O-oh! Captain Västerström! Yes, of course! I know...who you mean...” The brief flash of spirit withered and died beneath the hazy periwinkle sky.

“Then will you let me pass?”

“I...” The boy looked torn between misery and terror.

Lalli sighed again, then promised, “I will come back within an hour.” He didn’t particularly want to limit himself, but he didn’t want to have to go to Emil or be stuck in this place any longer either. He had spent the entire night in a giant steel ship, then half the morning on steel trains, and the rest of the day in a giant concrete building. Lalli wanted _out_.

But he'd had years of training in merciless self-control. So he took a quiet breath, stood up straighter, and explained in a calm voice, “My name is Lalli Hotakainen. You will learn my name and my face. And I will go out to scout beyond the borders of our camps. We will be working together for the next eight months, so get used to it."

The boy still seemed to be hoping for some brilliant inspiration to strike and tell him how to deal with an unexpected Finnish scout who had no intention of being ordered about. Since none seemed forthcoming, Lalli walked past him up to the gate, lifted the bar that held it shut, and swung it open. "I'd suggest you lock the gate after me," he said in parting. And then he was gone at last into the trees. 


	5. Chapter 5

_So I press my lips down into your neck_  
_And I stay there and I reconnect_  
_Bravery I've been trying to be perfect_  
_It can wait for a while_  
     - Incomplete, James Bay

 

 

5 EMIL

 

 

When Emil finally got away, he headed straight for the gate north of the ancient factory. Twilight was near at hand, and Emil had no doubt that his night scout was out there somewhere in the gloom, revelling in the solitude he would find among the shadowy trees. He was also just as sure that Lalli would forgive him for imposing upon that solitude.

He didn't even have to knock on the door of the guardhouse. As soon as he was in sight of it, the lad on duty came hurrying out. It was one of his new cleansers, he realized. Emil could assume easily enough what had happened: the regular guards, soldiers from the Home Guard who were rotated through this outpost for the glamorous task of opening and closing the gate for trains to pass through, had probably taken advantage of having so much fresh meat about and foisted the guardhouse onto one of them for an evening off.

The young recruits probably didn't know if they could or should refuse, and it wasn't like Emil had been around to notice. He'd been busy putting out fires left and right since he'd arrived in Orsa. Thank god that Tuuri was here now, and it looked like she could take over a lot of the organizational tasks, since Emil would be needed in the field starting the next day. He had no idea how he might have handled this project if she and Lalli hadn't come.

Though on the other hand...perhaps things wouldn't be half as bad now if they hadn't.

No one had been kicking up a fuss about having a joint project with the Finns before January, especially not when it meant finally having a secured line between Mora and Östersund. It was only after Emil had pushed for having a Finnish mage come along for the first time ever that he had apparently spit in someone's eye.

Three weeks after celebrating Lalli's 25th birthday together in Mora, and two weeks after saying good-bye to a stony-faced Lalli at the ferry terminal (he had, as usual, refused to admit to any kind of feelings that might be taken as vulnerability), Emil had walked into the office one Monday to find a baffling set of papers on his desk. They were supply orders for the work to begin from Östersund from late March, but the numbers didn't make any sense. Already with a sick feeling in his stomach, he had gotten to work finding out who had taken down the orders, which had come via a radio call from the main headquarters in Vansbro.

The lieutenant had insisted that there was no mistake and that she'd taken everything down just as it had been reported to her. So Emil's search for answers had begun. The next day, he had called down to Vansbro himself. Though he'd been passed around to several people, he'd eventually gotten an explanation for why the numbers were so off—even if he didn't get any answer as to who was responsible for the baffling situation.

Somehow the plan had been changed from dividing the Finnish and Swedish forces evenly among the north and south to work their ways toward Sveg from both ends. All of sudden, they were to have the entirety of the Swedish force move their way south from Östersund, while the Finns would be expected to work their way up north from Mora on their own.

Emil had hardly been able to keep from chewing off the head of the likely innocent man who'd had the bad luck to pass along this message. How could the Swedish officials seriously plan to abandon the Finnish contingent without any local support at all? Were they just planning to leave a map and a note in Mora, and hope that everything went fine until they met up in Sveg? Never mind the fact that they would have farther to go with smaller numbers than the Swedish group departing from Östersund.

It seemed like an impossibly rude slap in the face after their two countries had worked quite successfully together the year before. Emil's vague dreams of ongoing collaborations between Finland and Sweden had suddenly seemed about as likely as the Swedes being sent to Iceland for a cleansing project. He'd felt numb with shock by the time he hung up the radio receiver.  _How could he tell Lalli?_ The thought had haunted him and kept him from sleeping that night, as he'd tossed and turned in the bed he'd gotten to share with his mage for little more than a brief week.

The next morning he'd arrived at his office with reforged determination and marched straight to his major's office to see if she knew anything more than he did. Of course she had kept him waiting a good while for attempting to barge in on her morning without an appointment, but in the end she'd had her left-hand man let him through. And as she icily explained to him exactly the sort of complaints she'd been dealing with from the south, Emil had at last begun to realize how many high-ranking toes he had trod on without any idea that he was doing so. 

So in the end, who cared if the Home Guard took advantage of his lowly recruits for a few nights when Emil had already somehow managed to piss off the general major who oversaw all cleansing operations based out of Mora—basically a third of the entire Swedish army—if not General Berglund herself? At least his kids were getting some experience by having guard duty foisted off on them. It would probably do them more good than harm to actually do something with their time. 

“Captain Västerström!”

The boy saluted with a nervous fumble, during which he dropped his rifle. He bent to pick it up as Emil watched in dismay. The only hope he could cling to was that his young troops' lack of experience would make them malleable. Trying to get Swedish cleansers to take orders from a Finnish mage in their midst would have always been a challenge, but especially so for the grizzled old cleansers who were set in their ways after a decade or two of experience. Maybe these young kids could still be convinced to believe in Lalli.

“One of the Finns, sir, he insisted on going out—he said he was a scout, and that you had given him permission—but he promised he would come back within the hour, and you were busy dealing with the rest of the Finns, so I—I—”

Emil winced at the onslaught of panicked excuses. Raising one hand, he chopped through the air to cut the boy off. “That's enough. You’re not in trouble.” When the cleanser’s mouth dropped open, Emil hurried on before he might find enough air to start talking again. “He was correct. Of course Lalli has my permission to go scouting freely. You did nothing wrong.”

The new boy heaved a comically loud sigh, then looked up at Emil shamefaced. “I’m sorry, sir. Er, Captain. Captain Västerström, sir.” He cracked an unsure smile. “It’s a relief to hear you say that. I didn’t know what I could do to stop him.”

The thought of Lalli staring down this green kid brought the first real smile to Emil’s lips. The kid was half a head taller than Lalli and probably half again as heavy as him, but Emil was sure he hadn't stood a chance in the face of Lalli's merciless glare. “Probably nothing. He has more experience than your entire unit put together.” Emil glanced at the watch on his left wrist. “When would you say he left?”

The cleanser tugged a pocket field watch from his trousers and peered at its face in the fading light. “Umm, it’s been at least forty or fifty minutes, I’d say. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. He said he would.” Doubt crept into the boy's voice as he spoke, though.

“I’ll just go out and see if I can catch him on his way back then.” Emil looked at his empty hands a second. He didn't want to bother going back to the tent where he'd left his own belongings. For one thing, he didn't want to waste even another second before going off in search of Lalli. For another, he really didn't want to risk running into Lars, who he had gotten stuck sharing a tent with for the night. “Do you have a spare rifle I could borrow?”

A moment of stunned silence met his request. “ _What?"_ the kid asked at last. “But, sir—you want to go out _there_? Alone? But...it's getting dark!”

“Well, I'm not going far and not for long. I’m sure Lalli’s on his way back, as you said.” When the young guard still looked horrified, Emil rolled his eyes and lifted his fingers to his mouth. Making a ring with them the way that Lalli had taught him the previous summer, he whistled twice: once low, and then again higher and longer. Within seconds, an answering call drifted back through the evening as a high note followed by a low one. It came from the northeast, and it sounded close.

“You see?” Emil couldn't help grinning, now that he knew that Lalli was practically within reach. “We'll be back before you know it. We'll just have a little look around, get the lay of the land.” He slapped the boy on the shoulder as he passed. “Don’t worry. After half a year of this project, you’ll get used to being out in the field. The real work starts tomorrow!”

Sure, he could claim that he wanted to check the terrain. That he wanted to see if Lalli had learned anything useful for the work that would be beginning the next day. He would come up with any excuse he needed as long as he got out of the gate now and got Lalli to himself for even a half-hour. Even five minutes.

The temporary guard reluctantly undid the barricade and let Emil escape. In his haste, Emil nearly forgot to turn and take the offered rifle so that he wasn’t completely defenseless in the wild. Then he set off toward the north, in the direction he had heard that whistle come from.

His heart was pounding, and it wasn’t because he was out amid the wild things that lived outside civilized areas. The shadowy woods were no haven to him, like he knew they were to Lalli, but he was confident enough navigating the Silent World after so many years of fieldwork. A beast lumbering through the woods would be met with a hail of bullets. And while he wouldn’t like to run into a giant on his own in the gathering dark, Lalli wouldn’t have signaled back with those notes if there was any real threat in the area.

There had been plenty of time for Emil to learn the signals that the Finnish army used when he’d been in Finland for the better part of the previous year. Lalli's call had meant "I'm back coming toward you" and "No cause for alarm." Emil had learned about two dozen different patterns, ranging from calls for help and warning signals to the more mundane calls that Finnish hunters used to locate one each other when they were out of one another's sight in the woods. It never did do to shoot one of your coworkers because you thought he was an approaching beast.

Emil was just considering trying that soft warble the hunters used when they wanted to check if they were near to one another without spooking off anything in the area, but then the need was removed by Lalli appearing at his side. As always, Emil hadn't even heard him coming. One moment he'd been walking alone beside the train tracks and the next Lalli was pacing alongside him, silent as a lynx. Emil's smile nearly split his face when he noticed, and he was still grinning as he grabbed Lalli with one hand looped around the back of his head and pulled him in for a quick kiss that was probably more teeth than anything.

"I've been wanting to do that all afternoon," he admitted into the lips still pressed to his, eyes still closed and senses flooded with the feeling of Lalli's mouth beneath his and the scent of him filling his nose and the warmth of his body nearly brushing up against Emil's own in the cold evening. He loved how they were nearly the same height and how he could do this without having to bend down or strain his neck. He loved everything about kissing Lalli.

He began to step back, conscious that they were still standing unprotected in the woods, but Lalli reached up and twisted both his hands in Emil's shaggy hair, locking him in place so that he could return the favor. His kiss wasn't all teeth; it was a hungry mouth and grasping fingers and all demand. He explored Emil as though he had to taste every inch of him to know he was real, and when he finally let go, still nipping lightly at Emil's lips as he pulled away, Emil's earlier thrill of excitement had been replaced by a pounding, insistent need that was not going to simply go away.

Emil crushed the thinner man against himself, squeezing him tight in an embrace that was meant to keep Lalli from doing anything more to tempt him as much as it was to hold him close. "You're driving me mad here, you know that, right?" His voice sounded tortured even to his own ears. They were finally alone, and he wanted to shove Lalli up against the nearest tree and push his quiet scout to the edge of his control—and then right over it. He wanted to watch as Lalli went to pieces, seeing that side of him that no one else got to see. But he also didn't want to get the both of them killed. He planned to enjoy a very long future with Lalli yet, which was why his next question came out like more of a plea when he asked, "Where are we going? You better not have started something we can't finish."

Lalli snorted, a dismissive snort that told Emil  _Who do you think I am?_ He shrugged out of Emil's clutches, keeping hold of only one hand as he began tugging the Swede away from Orsa. "There's an old house up this way." It was all he had to say for himself, and Emil didn't need any more explanation than that.

 

 

The house came into sight, a boxy shape between the softer lines of the trees. The door opened easily with a push. If there had been any locks on it, Lalli must have taken care of them when he had first scouted it out. Just as he had managed to make a pile out of some ancient linens he must have found somewhere in the crumbling building. Maybe they had once been blankets or curtains. They were half disintegrated now, holey and ragged, but softer at least than the floor would have been when Lalli shoved Emil down onto his back and clambered atop him.

“Stay away from the walls.” Lalli’s raspy voice was soft but his hands sure as he grabbed the zipper of Emil’s light jacket and pulled it down. “The whole place might just come down on us.” He shoved the jacket roughly off Emil’s shoulders, trapping his arms at his side so that he couldn’t even reach up in turn.

Emil had to assume that Lalli had checked the place out and decided it was safe enough. Both of their rifles had been wedged under the doorknob, forming a cross that would at least slow down anyone or anything trying to come through it. The hand that had been holding his and tugging him along through the woods was warm, while the other was still chilled from the night air. The contrast as they both dove under the cloth of his shirt sent a shudder down to the pit of Emil's stomach.

As Emil still struggled to get his arms free from his jacket, Lalli’s hands went to his belt. The metal buckle clattered, the noise louder than the rustling of cloth or their heavy breathing. Lalli leaned over and spoke into Emil’s ear. “Now, why don't you tell me what’s wrong.”

It wasn't even a question. Emil couldn’t help a breathless laugh. “Really? You want me to explain now?” He finally managed to get both arms loose and he slid his hands up Lalli’s narrow back, his fingers counting up the vertebrae like they were following a map. A treasure map perhaps. “You’re going to have to choose between talking and doing this, because I’m not capable of doing both when I haven’t seen you since January.”

Lalli’s hands stilled, and he seemed to consider the question for a moment. Then he was back in motion, yanking the belt free from its loops as he spoke in a quiet growl. “Talking we can do in front of anyone. Not this.”

“I knew you were the smart one.” Emil grinned as he pulled Lalli’s face down for a kiss. He let his lips wander along the cold skin of those sharp cheekbones, burying his face in the hair falling loose from its knotted bit of cord, and the smell of pine trees bombarded him as he inhaled. It made something clutch painfully in the vicinity of his heart. Whenever that familiar smell surrounded him, Emil felt _home_ in a way that he never did when Lalli was gone.

“Three months,” he muttered as he tugged up the tunic from around Lalli’s waist. “Nearly three entire damn months. Let’s never do that again.”

“Trying not to,” Lalli agreed shortly, his hands deft as they slid along the warm skin of Emil’s stomach.

And they were in a rotting century old house. And the Silent World was all around them, with its threats and fears, and their project was already falling apart before it had even begun. But Lalli was here with him, sliding down his body now, his warm breath ghosting across the patch of bare skin where Emil's shirt had been rucked up. The loose hairs too short to be held tight in his ponytail tickled Emil's skin as Lalli laid his head down a moment, his cheek resting against Emil's stomach while he whispered something to himself in Finnish.

Emil couldn't understand the words, but he didn't need to. He understood the tone. It was the same hushed, reverent tone with which Emil thought of Lalli and the miracle of what they had managed to find together out of the horrors of the past. Emil’s head fell back and he could see through the rotting roof beams to the sky overhead. Familiar constellations glittered sharply in the deep black sky, and the world was reduced to the space of the musty room, to the cool velvet of Lalli’s skin under his hands, to the warmth of his mouth. Everything else fell away to be lost, for a time at least, in the dark spaces between the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Finally._


	6. Chapter 6

_Gone is the emptiness_  
_We just take what's best and we move on_  
_All the hurt gets left_  
_I should've guessed_

     -Incomplete, James Bay

 

 

5 TUURI

 

 

It was taking Tuuri far longer than she liked to get her tent ready on her own. Lalli had slipped away at some point, though she had no idea when. By the time she'd noticed and asked Emil, the Swedish captain had simply grinned and told her that Lalli was off scouting. She'd huffed in frustration over the fact that he had somehow noticed Lalli leaving while she had not. But of course he did have a much more motivated interest in knowing where her cousin was than Tuuri herself did.

Then Emil himself had disappeared while Tuuri was talking to some of the Finnish cleansers. She'd realized that when everyone else had finished collecting their tents and staking out lots among the scrub, and she had been left standing completely alone in the field watching the cleansers file into the building for dinner.

Tuuri had trudged over to the trampled bit of land where three sad sacks were left of the once heaping pile. Since she was the one who had helped come up with the numbers, she had known that one must belong to her and Lalli. The other two were likely for the cooks, who had still been stuck preparing dinner in the large former factory that served as the headquarters here in Orso. Tuuri had kicked out at one, feeling a bit mean-spirited after being abandoned by both Lalli and Emil. But the cooks hadn't done anything against her. Feeling a stab of guilt, she had dropped her unmolested tent back to the ground and picked up the one with her dusty footprint on it instead.

The tent in its canvas sack, all knobbly ends and awkward bits, was half as long as she was, and she had lugged it north, sure that Lalli would be off that direction anyway. She had half been hoping that he would appear back through the gates that she could spy at the end of the town, but even though she had moved as sluggishly as she could, he still hadn't returned in time to help her. So, as the twilight gloaming turned into the full gloom of night, Tuuri had engaged in her private battle against the pile of lightweight material, metal rods, and cord.

By the third time the thing had collapsed in the middle of her attempts to make it into shelter, Tuuri was swearing in a steady streak. She was a qualified engineer, for the sake of all that was sacred! She could disassemble a combustion engine and rebuild it in two hours. If there had been any instructions along with this pile of useless hardware, she had no doubt she would have had it together in minutes and probably found some way to improve upon the design as well. But it had not come with with any. Just several tangled lengths of cord, a pile of rods, pins, and other hardware, and a billowing mess of cloth. 

She almost didn't hear when the Swedish boy tried to shyly interrupt. The latest curse was still tripping off her tongue as she turned, and he repeated his question as though he hadn't noticed a thing. "Could I be of any help?"

Tuuri let herself finish the Finnish curse, which involved several things you should never do to a reindeer if you wanted to keep all your fingers, because she recognized the boy. He was the same enthusiastic young thing who had interrupted her and Emil in the radio room. What had his name been? _Elis_. That was it. It was close enough to Emil. She ought to be able to remember it.

The idea of getting stuck in an awkward conversation with a starry-eyed admirer was exhausting after the long night and day she'd had, but not nearly as much as the thought of not having a tent set up so that she could crawl into it and sleep away the next 10 or 12 hours of her life. So she admitted, "I imagine you probably could." She even summoned a watered-down smile for the cleanser. "If they teach you how to set up a tent in that fancy training of yours, that is."

"Oh, they do." Elis crouched down and started pulling out pins from the ground as she watched from the side. He kept his eyes on his work as he got busy undoing the mess she had made. "So you and the captain were able to sort out the situation with the tents?"

Tuuri squatted beside him, wrapping her arms around her knees and letting her chin rest atop them as she watched him work without even offering to help. She figured she had already put in her time. "We have enough for tonight, but we're still trying to get more so that not everyone is forced to share."

He nodded understandingly as he shook out the thicker square of canvas with a sharp snap and laid it out flat on the ground, apparently to serve as some sort of floor. He'd sorted the various hardware into neat piles faster than she'd even gotten all of the pieces out of the sack they'd come in. Now he started fitting various lengths together without a moment of uncertainty, assembling together two equal poles in moments.

"You're actually pretty good at this," Tuuri said, begrudging even when giving out the compliment.

"That fancy training of mine," he reminded her, tossing her own words back at her without any apparent malice. Still, Tuuri felt a frizzle of shame and her cheeks suddenly felter warmer than they had a moment before in the cold evening air.

"I'm sorry," she said, her eyes averted to keep from any chance of having to actually look this kid in the eye as she apologized to him. "I was frustrated about the tent. But I'm glad you came by. Otherwise I might have ended up sleeping under the stars tonight...and any rain or snow that might decide to come by."

She was still looking to the distance, so she only heard the smile in this Elis's voice as he replied, "I'm glad if I could save you from such a terrible fate. And I think I'd better apologize, too."

Tuuri turned back in surprise. "For what?" He had managed to prop up the front end of the tent with one of the poles he'd assembled, helping it stay upright and the cloth taut with cords running out to the front of the tent and to each side, all pinned firmly into the ground. Gathering up the rest of his supplies, he went around to the back to apparently repeat the process.

This time Tuuri watched, since it seemed that the cleanser was intent on keeping his eyes on the tent rather than her. "For that awful first impression," he said at last as he fit the second rod under the cloth and pulled it upright until it finally began to look something like a tent. Looping a cord through a metal grommet in the cloth, he moved to secure his next pin in the ground. "I'd seen Emil—I mean, Captain Västerström—around from a distance, but I hadn't expected to end up face-to-face with him. Or you. I know it's probably something you've heard a thousand times, but your expedition into the Silent World really changed my life."

Tuuri felt her brow twist as she couldn't help a bemused smile, thinking back on everything she had watched Emil go through in the last year. Never mind the quieter traumas she and Lalli and Onni had all dealt with in their own private ways. "It changed ours as well."

Elis groaned, planting his face in the cloth of the tent he was putting up. "Of course it did! I'm sorry! I just keep putting my foot in my mouth." Finally he looked up at her, and she was struck for a moment by those earnest dark eyes. He was one of those people who had inherited genes from one of the other races that had—as far as anyone knew—disappeared along with the rest of the world. They were rarer in Finland, which had never had as many immigrants as Sweden, if their history books were to be believed. "I didn't mean to imply that our experiences were comparable in any way. I just wanted to be sure that you knew that...well, that what you all did had a real lasting impact on many other people as well."

"Tuuri!"

She looked up to see Emil hurrying in their direction, looking back over his shoulder once to give Lalli an exasperated look. Exasperated but hopelessly fond. The tension around Emil's mouth had disappeared and he smiled easily now, while Lalli was striding through the scruffy grass with the look of a cat who had just stolen an entire fish from the dinner spread without getting caught. It didn't take an Academic to guess why.

"Glad you two could finally join me," she grumbled, putting one hand on the pole holding the tent up. Though she'd had far less to do with getting it upright than the boy hovering over her shoulder now, she still made of point of saying, "I got our tent ready, Lalli."

Lalli pulled level with Emil at last, obviously feeling no need to hurry for anyone else's sake. His eyes slid between Tuuri and Elis. "Did you?" he remarked in a neutral voice that told Tuuri he didn't believe that was even remotely true. She thought about spitefully pointing out the dusty patches on his and Emil's clothes, as though they'd been rolling around in something together, but resisted. She hoped her gods appreciated the effort and would reward her someday for it.

Tuuri glanced behind herself at the young cleanser who had actually done all the work of pitching the tent and found him struck silent again, apparently this time in awe at meeting Lalli. Given how quickly he had recognized her, she could only assume that he must have poured over the reports of the expedition enough times to recognize them all from the five-year-old photos taken before the expedition. Taking pity on him, since he had helped provide her with a covered place to sleep that night, she decided introductions were in order. "Lalli, this is Elis. He's one of Emil's new cleansers. Elis, this is my cousin Lalli."

Elis stepped around her and held out a hand to Lalli. "Of course! You're the mage. I'd heard you were here this year. I think that's just fantastic. It's really exciting to see Sweden trying new things. It's practically unheard of, in fact. This is going to be such an amazing—"

He broke off when Tuuri stepped on his foot. Lalli had reluctantly let the younger man take his hand, but then Tuuri had watched his eyes glaze over while Elis kept on pumping it up and down and talking without cease. Knowing her cousin, she could guess that he was moments away from snapping, and she was afraid that one of Lalli's waspish tongue lashings would break this poor kid's heart.

She sent a prayer of thanks to the heavens when Emil chose to nudge Lalli with an elbow, telling him teasingly, "See? We'll win them over one by one." When the message came from Emil, the prickly energy seemed to sap out of Lalli. Grumbling under his breath in Finnish, he extracted his hand from Elis's grip and gave him a short nod.

Tuuri gave Elis a nervous smile. "Well, thank you again for your help with the tent. You really saved me."

The cleanser was at least quick enough to recognize a dismissal when he was on the receiving end of one. He graciously waved away her thanks and excused himself before hurrying away, looking back over his shoulder one time with an expression that could only be described as awe. Tuuri shook her head, still not sure if his admiration was flattering or just annoying. At least he seemed relatively polite for a potential stalker.

When they were finally left on their own again, the trio looked at one another. Tuuri cocked an eyebrow knowingly. "Well. Now that you two got _that_ out of your systems, can we finally talk about what the hell is going on?"

Emil bit his lower lip but it did nothing to disguise his smile. He looked at Lalli and the smile grew even wider. Tuuri watched as her cousin rolled his eyes at the man who she knew he'd pined after for years, so she didn't believe for a moment that he was unaffected as he acted by that boyish expression of pure happiness. She didn't even like Emil _that_ way, and even she wanted to have that expression leveled at her. He looked at Lalli as though he was the most wondrous thing in the world.

And yet he managed to tear his eyes away from her cousin to ask Tuuri, "Did you get dinner yet? It's a pretty long story, so I don't know if we should get into it if you still need to get something to eat."

"I haven't. I thought you hadn't either," she pointed out, since she was quite sure he'd slipped away to go running after Lalli while everyone else had been going to eat.

Emil's grin grew even more annoyingly pleased with himself. "I guess I worked up an appetite somehow. I suddenly find myself starving."

Tuuri scoffed and strode off in the direction of the Orsa Link building. "Let's go then. I'm not sure I can take much more of this day on an empty stomach."

 

 

After Tuuri had some food in her stomach and they'd found Teemu once to wish him a good night and make plans for meeting the next morning, the trio retreated back to the tent that Lalli and Tuuri would be sharing until they could get more equipment. Tuuri crawled in first, holding up her crank-powered lantern and shoving the duffel bag she'd collected from the messy pile in the headquarters in ahead of her. Lalli had picked up his bag as well from the dwindling pile, and he tossed it in after her before crouching down and following her into the tent.

By the time Emil poked his head in, they had shoved their things into the low corners at the edge of the tent. Tuuri looked up from shaking out her bedroll and watched in bemusement as the Swede threw himself down on the hard ground, rolling onto his back and dropping his head in Lalli's lap. She couldn't imagine it was all that comfortable, given that Lalli was mostly made up of bones. But even more surprising than Emil choosing the position was the fact that Lalli only sighed, lifted the other man's head to move it into a slightly more comfortable position, then left his long fingers in Emil's tousled hair instead of moving them away.

"Now," Emil declared, his eyes shut and his face at peace. "Now I know everything will be all right."

"Will it really?" Tuuri asked. "I think it's time you came clean. What on earth is going on around here? Projects aren't always run this dismally in Sweden, are they?"

A sigh slipped out of Emil but he didn't open his eyes. Tuuri watched as Lalli's fingers tightened in those golden locks. She wasn't sure if it was unconscious or if he was trying to somehow reassure Emil by reminding him that he was there with that sharp tug. Either way, Emil was smiling again as he rubbed the back of his head against Lalli's thigh. Tuuri felt oddly guilty that she was the one who would be sharing the tent with Lalli tonight, when it seemed obvious that Emil needed Lalli more. But she wasn't sure that she wanted to sleep with whatever strange Swede Emil was sharing with that night either.

_Tomorrow. I'll call around tomorrow and get some more tents for them. If anyone can do it, I can._

Feeling resolved, Tuuri reached out one foot and nudged Emil in the side. She reminded me, "If you don't tell me, how am I supposed to help?"

"Are you 'supposed' to?" Emil laughed, and Lalli looked at her, their eyes meeting over the Swede's head. She knew her cousin well enough to understand the nearly bleak expression on his face. He probably didn't know how to help Emil himself, and Lalli would hate that feeling.

"Sorry, I'm not really trying to avoid the topic," Emil muttered. "I just don't even know where to start."

As Lalli's fingers played in Emil's hair, the young captain slowly began to explain just what had unfolded over the past couple of months. He told how he had found out about a sudden change to the plans, which had resulted in there being no Swedes at all assigned to the southern half of the project. He said that he'd confronted his major about it, and she had made it clear—in so many words, and in a way that made it unquestionable that she was not interested in starting a political war—that the change had been effected by General Major Hedlund of Mora. He was ranked higher than her, and Major Karlsson did not plan to argue with him for no good reason. Not if she ever hoped to move up and out of the small base in Östersund where she was currently stationed.

So Emil had pushed as hard as he could, from both the Östersund side and from calling around in Mora. He had succeeded, to some extent, as the next notification he'd received had been orders assigning him to the southern flank. But only him. He hadn't been sure if it had been meant to be some kind of punishment or insult, but he hadn't cared. At least he had succeeded in getting placed in the same location as Lalli for the rest of the year. What did it matter if it was meant to be a bad thing, to be sent to deal with the Finns alone? It was a dream come true, as far as he was concerned.

The only issues with going alone were that it would look like an insult to the Finnish members, in offering them so little support, and the near impossibility of them reaching all the way to Sveg by the end of the season. That was why next Emil had begun pushing to get whatever units he could pulled to the south end. It hadn't gone well.

The previous year's project in Eno had been populated by volunteers. Normally they could get enough cleansers who wanted to take part in such overseas projects by choice, because the pay was better than a usual season. But this year's project was taking place in Sweden, making it part of the regular course of work—even if there would be some extra Finns around. Established units were being given formal assignments, and Emil couldn't just ask the cleansers who liked him to volunteer and expect that they would be released from their duties. His regular units out of Östersund had already been assigned to cleansing around Luleå under another captain, just as they had been while he'd been away the year before. He'd checked with the four other captains in Östersund, and all of their units were already assigned to other projects or the northern flank.

Emil had tried briefly to inquire about any of the units out of Mora, but General Major Hedlund's influence had been undeniable. Emil hadn't been able to get anywhere, with any of the three bases in the vicinity of Mora. So then, after a few more sleepless nights, he had thought up a new tactic. He had contacted the recruitment office, which had been courting him for years to come work for them. Using whatever charm he could summon, he had managed to use their connections with the training camps to get any unassigned recruits from the latest graduating class assigned to him and this project.

And that was how he had ended up with 30 of Sweden's newest cleaners. That was the most he could get. Most regular projects didn't start quite this early, but enough were getting under way that the majority of the newest class had already been given orders. At least there had been little General Major Hedlund could do about it, since the freshmen cleansers weren't directly under his jurisdiction unless they were assigned to one of the three Mora-area bases. So Emil's ploy had worked out—except, of course, for the supply offices in Mora somehow "forgetting" that he would need more tents. At least the food supply they'd received so far had accommodated the new cleansers as well as the Finns. He hoped no one would start messing with that next. Hungry cleansers would be slow cleansers.

Lalli pulled on Emil's hair again as his story was wrapped up, and there was no doubt that it was intentional this time. "You didn't mention any of this in any letters," Lalli pointed out with a sour expression. Emil looked up at him and gave a little shrug.

"I did mention that there had been some complications."

"I think that was an understatement," Lalli grumbled.

Tuuri thought this was a bit rich coming from her cousin of all people. But she didn't get the chance to say anything before Emil had shot back, "I didn't want to say anything more in writing. My mail could be read, and I'm in a tight enough spot already."

Lalli sighed and looked away unhappily. Emil reached up to tug at a hank of hair that had come loose from Lalli's hair-tie, and Lalli looked back down at the man whose head lay across his knee, something softening in his face as he did. Tuuri winced. The guilt was killing her. "Okay, that's it. Emil, why don't you just stay here tonight?"

Emil turned his head to the side to look at her in surprise. "What, and leave you to sleep with Lars? I'm not _that_ bad of a friend, I hope."

Tuuri wrinkled her nose at the memory of the slimy lieutenant who had served as their 'guide' that afternoon. "I'm not that good of a friend, either. I meant that you could stay here with Lalli and I both, as long as the two of you keep it clean."

To her surprise, Lalli snickered, his head ducking down as he tried to hide his amusement from her. It wasn't often that she got to see Lalli laugh, and it only made her feel even more sure that both of them did better when they were together. But to her surprise, her offer instead had Emil rolling upright into a sitting position. He scrubbed tiredly at his face as he assured her, "No, no, it's fine. I should be going. We all need sleep tonight. We should just call it a night."

That was what he said, but he still hesitated before moving any farther. He seemed a bit unsure how to say good-bye with Tuuri just inches away. She sighed and grabbed her toiletry bag, climbing to her knees.

"Where can I find some clean water to brush my teeth?" she asked, before starting to crawl toward the tent's flap. Emil shot her a grateful look and explained that the bathrooms in the Orsa Link building had running water. So she crawled out into the dark night and began trudging back to the distant building to give them at least a couple minutes of privacy to say good night in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, a bit later than expected but here--something a little different! Tuuri POV! I did say that this was a different sort of story, right?


	7. Chapter 7

_I know I'll do it again_  
_I know we're gonna collide_  
_I know we'll call it the end_  
_It's always always a lie_

     - Collide, James Bay

 

  

7 EMIL

 

 

Emil was up early the next morning, sitting in the large empty hall in the Orsa Link building where they'd been serving meals. He'd woken up before dawn, after a restless night spent sharing a tent with Lars Nyman. As soon as Emil had left behind the comfort of Lalli and Tuuri's tent and returned to his own, the lieutenant had started whinging about the project and the conditions until Emil had finally cut him off and rolled over with a curt "We'll need our energy for tomorrow, Lars. Try to get some rest now."

Lars had still been sleeping when Emil had crept out with his small pack that morning. With just one wishful glance across the field to the tent where he knew Lalli must be sleeping, Emil had headed to the river just behind the Orsa Link. In the weak gray light of the dawn, he'd taken the chance to scrub himself and wash his hair one last time before the sweaty work would begin. His hands had still been shaking slightly from the cold when he shaved by touch alone, not bothering with a hand mirror when the light was so poor anyway. Then he'd dressed in his field uniform and shrugged his light jacket back on. He might be abandoning it hours into the day, once the work had him dripping with sweat, but it was barely over freezing in the morning and its warmth was more than welcome.

He'd dropped his bag back in the tent and made for the headquarters, where he poured over a map of the area and mentally reviewed Lalli's comments from the night before. Even if Emil's thoughts tended to run toward things other than work whenever Lalli was around, the two of them weren't utterly useless together. Lalli had diligently reported what he'd found out in his exploration when they had been walking back to Orsa the previous evening. And the two of them had shared their thoughts with Teemu while Tuuri had been off getting food for them all.

Emil penciled down the numbers again. He knew them all by heart, but somehow he couldn't help hoping that somehow they would tally up differently each time. As if maybe he'd made some mistake every other time he'd previously calculated them.

They needed to try to cover nearly 20 km each month, if they hoped to get to Sveg on time. Aiming for close to a kilometer per day would probably be for the best, because of course they would not make that quota each day. So with a hundred cleaners, they might aim for 400 meters before breaking for lunch each day. Thirty or so groups of three meant each group had to clear a 12 meter span. To a distance of 25 meters from the railroad tracks. Even with the 5 or 6 meters already cleared right alongside the tracks, even knowing that they only had to fell the trees and leave them lying wherever they landed, it would be something like 250 square meters in four or five hours. It sounded impossible _._ No, scratch that. It  _was_ impossible, at least for his green cleansers.

With the sound of pots clanging from the kitchen area, where the cooks were already working on preparing huge tureens of oats for the many cleansers who would soon be showing up hungry and eager for breakfast, Lalli was able to sidle right up to Emil without being noticed. Emil only caught the motion from the corner of his eye as Lalli took a seat beside him. He was already smiling as he turned. Anyone else would have slapped him on the shoulder or cleared a throat or found some other way of interrupting. Only Lalli would ease his way into Emil's surroundings in such an unobtrusive way and wait until Emil was ready to notice him.

"You're up early," Emil said, propping one elbow on the table and leaning upon it so that he could angle himself toward the scout. He wouldn't do more than that when anyone might walk into the large hall at any time.

"Tuuri snores," Lalli said shortly, leaning lightly upon the table but going no further to mirror Emil's pose. A smile flickered across his face, though, as he added, "So do you. But I know how to wake you up without getting an ear chewed off."

Emil leaned a little closer so he could softly say, "Oh, I don't know. I've been known to take a nibble from time to time." He got a jab in his ribs for his teasing. Grinning unrepentantly, Emil asked, "Do you want to get something to eat? We can probably go bother the cook staff by now."

Lalli shrugged, and so the two of them ended up peeking in on the busy women in the kitchen. Tilde spotted them first and elbowed Tuva to get her attention. So far Emil had still never heard Tilde say a word; he wasn't sure if the stony-faced woman even did speak.

Tuva gave one of her throaty chuckles when she saw who was interrupting her work. "Why am I not surprised to find that the two of you would be acquainted?"

Lalli looked at Emil in suspicion. "What did  _you_ do?"

"Me? What about you? I only had to bring her the unfortunate news that she would be cooking for 124 people rather than 80 or so. What did you do to earn the wrath of Tuva's crew?"

Lalli shrugged. "Surprised them?"

Emil laughed as Liv interrupted in a huff. "He snuck up on us, without even saying a word of warning. Even  _though_ he's quite able to speak Swedish. Nearly made me drop an entire bowl of potatoes, too."

With a good-humored smile, Emil leaned on a clear bit of counter. "So does that make us your two least favorite people on this project already?"

Liv looked pained as she had to admit, "Second least favorite. That awful woman Eva dared come in here after dinner and suggest that there was something wrong with our stew. At least you two seem to like the food."

Lalli snickered into his fist, and Emil was still happily studying the way that the laughter transformed Lalli's face when two bowls were placed in front of him with a clatter. Turning from Lalli, he caught sight of Tilde's stiff back as she walked away. Emil looked down at the two bowls of steaming porridge, then back up to her in surprise. "Thank you, Tilde," he called out, though he got no acknowledgement that he had even spoken.

Stepping up beside him, Lalli picked up one of the two bowls and began to eat. Emil decided to follow suite. After a few bites, he spoke aloud the plans he'd been formulating since Lalli had appeared at his side. "We should go pick you out a horse after breakfast. We ought to have a bit of time before everyone else gets here and finishes eating."

The last traces of amusement disappeared from Lalli's face and he stilled, only his eyes moving as they slid over to meet Emil's in question. "Why should we do that?"

Emil felt his eyebrows quirking up. He tried not to look too amused, but he must have failed, because Lalli bristled with annoyance. "Lalli, that’s how we do things here," he tried to explain, holding up a placating hand. "You saw the maps. You know how much ground we have to cover, so unless you can be in several places at once..."

The stubborn line of Lalli’s jaw twitched. This wasn’t the time for teasing. Emil dropped any attempt at humor. Approaching Lalli as one professional to another seemed safer than trying to placate his prickly boyfriend with charm. He went instead back to the numbers that he had been pondering that morning on his own.

"We have to cover 120 kilometers to reach Sveg by the end of October. It's going to be April in a few days, so that gives us a bit less than seven months. We should aim to cover 20 kilometers per month, knowing that we're unlikely to make that figure in the first month, with new recruits and new processes to work out. We only had to cover 30 kilometers in an entire _season_  when we went from Eno to Pamilo." At least the numbers didn’t seem to come as a surprise to Lalli, who devoured maps like most people devoured a fine meal. Emil pushed on, hoping he was getting through to Lalli’s sense of reason.

"That means we should aim to cover close to a kilometer a day. And we can't work too closely together, either. You can't fell a tree when there are twenty other people working directly in the path that it'll fall in. If we're working in the Swedish style, we'll put a trio of people every ten meters or so. Two to work on felling at a time, the third to keep watch and work on clearing the surrounding ground for a bit of rest till they rotate. That will be something like 40 units, spread out over 200 meters or more, each slowly working their way out 25 meters from the tracks in opposing directions. You can't protect them all on foot." 

Lalli had paled slightly, turning away and leaving his spoon stuck in his bowl of porridge. Emil's heart did a funny flip in his chest. "What is it?"

The mage shook his head but said nothing. Emil put a hand on Lalli's hip, turning the mage to face him. No one would be able to see what was happening below the height of the counter, even if the cooks hadn't all had their backs turned to them. "Lalli, talk to me."

The Finnish man was still frowning, his eyes fixed on the counter instead of meeting Emil's gaze, but he did pry his lips open enough to mutter, "I didn't know."

Tuva's crew was still busy working on breakfast for the large group, so Emil risked putting his hand on the nape of Lalli's neck for a moment, his fingers rubbing at the base of his skull. "Hey. We can still do this. It's going to be okay."

Lalli shook his head beneath Emil's touch. "I promised your major."

"What, that you would keep even a single cleanser from getting so much as a paper cut? Lalli, it's not your responsibility alone—"

He was left talking to no one as Lalli shrugged off his hand and stepped away several feet. He looked at Emil with steely eyes. "I gave my word."

And Emil knew that Lalli’s pride left no room for compromise. _From one disaster to another._  He should have made sure that Lalli knew what he was getting himself into. But Lalli always seemed ten steps ahead of Emil, at least when it was anything to do with the Silent World. He hadn't even thought to question whether the Swedish system of cleansing was something that Lalli might need to have explained to him. He certainly hadn't considered that Lalli might balk at something like riding a horse to survey the work, the way that captains and lieutenants all did in Sweden, but he didn't see how he could do anything but force the point.

Whether Lalli had known what he was agreeing to when he'd made that promise to Major Karlsson or not, they were all now stuck in this mess together. Emil was tasked with getting them all to Sveg on time—unless Teemu chose to mutiny, which he probably could do since the Finns outnumbered the Swedes nearly four to one. And to get there on time, he  _had_ to have Lalli be able to watch the entire line so that they could dedicate as much manpower as possible to cleansing. They didn't even have any cats, Grade A or otherwise. He'd been told there were none of those to spare either, as long as it was him asking.

If it had been just another project, Emil might seriously consider whether it was worth it. Making Lalli miserable didn't seem worth the—what? The slap on the wrist he was likely to get it he failed to lead a project to success? The dock in pay? Shitty assignments for a few years? He had little idea what the likely repercussions would be, as he'd never yet had a project fail since being named captain. He didn't care about anything his commanding officers might do to him. But what was truly at stake here was the chance of getting Lalli himself to stay with him, as a part of his life all year round. Which meant that they had to succeed. No matter what it took. So, as much as he hated the troubled look on Lalli's face, Emil could do little but sigh and stab at his bowl of porridge. "Let's finish eating, then I'll take you to see the horses." 

 

 

"Not that one. Seriously, Lalli. It hates people."

They were standing in the temporary 'stable,' which was actually a row of storage units of some sort a dozen meters north of the original train station. They had about a dozen horses that they'd gotten up from Mora, and once they'd led them off of the transport train, it hadn't seemed worth it to find another place to house them. Like everything else they'd managed to get up from Mora, the horses hadn't been all that impressive. But Emil had a found decent, hard-worked nag for himself when he'd arrived. She wasn't anything exciting, but she was a proper workhorse who would trod along tirelessly, and he expected to be on the move a lot as he kept an eye on the progress along the line.

The biggest point of trouble they'd had was with the black beast that Lalli was now looking from head to hoof. That horse was as likely to try to take a bite out of you as it was to bear you. The young cleansers who he'd assigned stable duty had taken to tossing hay and oats in at it from a distance, from what he'd heard from their lieutenants. No one had any love—or extra digits—to spare for the foul-tempered stallion.

Two of the young cleansers were watching from several meters away now, frozen in their morning duties by the sight of someone willingly approaching the bane of their existence. Meanwhile there was a glint of evil satisfaction in Lalli’s gray eyes as he said with relish, "Good. I wouldn’t want to suffer alone."

"Lalli, I’m not kidding..."

Emil’s weak protest was eclipsed by a very real sense of fear when he saw his rail-thin lover stalk up to the 500kg monster. At his full height, Lalli was about even with the creature’s withers and it snorted down at the crown of his head like it was considering whether to take a bite out of it with its large, flat teeth.

"Just so we understand one another,” Lalli said, his hand darting up to grab the horse by the leather noseband and pull its huge head down to his face, "I like this no more than you. But they say I must have a horse, and it doesn’t seem like you’re doing anyone any good here anyway. So, we’re both simply going to do what we have to do."

The horse snorted roughly, blowing some of the loose strands away from Lalli’s face and shook its head free from Lalli’s grasp. But that was all—to the shock of every Swede in the stable, who had learned in just the few brief days that they’d been in Orsa to simply steer clear of this particular horse.

Lalli reached out and unlatched the gate, catching the horse’s reins in his other hand with only a bit of fumbling. Emil didn't think anyone else would have noticed the sign of uncertainty in the mage but him. Backed by an evil-tempered creature ten times his weight, Lalli turned on the rest of them with an imperious look and asked, "Now what do I do with it?" 

Emil had to bite down on his lip as he struggled to maintain a professional expression. The slight roll of Lalli’s eyes reassured Emil that the Finn knew exactly what he was thinking anyway.

"You learn to ride it," Emil suggested. Then he quickly corrected himself, "Him. He's not an 'it.'"

"That's what you say," Lalli muttered. He pulled the reins taut, not jerking on them but making it clear that motion was expected, then began leading the way away from the moldering building. The black horse began slowly walking, but then it threw its large head back in a quick move that had Lalli stumbling backward and nearly falling on his ass. He turned with a glare that had probably stopped giants in their tracks.

Stalking back to the creature he had claimed, Lalli grabbed it by the strap that ran under its jaw once more. He spoke to it a low, deadly-sounding Finnish, and even though the words meant nothing to anyone else present, the tone may have done the trick. Because the next time that Lalli pulled the horse forward, it came after him in a slow, steady walk.

Emil tossed open the door to the small chamber where he'd left his nag and clucked at her as he grabbed up her reins and tossed an extra sheepskin over his shoulder. "Come on, girl. I guess we've got a mage to teach how to ride."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday updates might become a thing now...


	8. Chapter 8

_You wear your heart on your sleeve_  
_I wear my blood on my tie_  
_But it's only love underneath this disguise_  
       - Collide, James Bay 

 

 

8 LALLI

   

 

The cleansers were gathered in front of the gate, staying clear of the railroad tracks. The first northbound train of the morning was due within the half-hour, and it never hurt to keep a healthy distance from an oncoming train. Freshly sharpened axes hung from the sweaty palms of the new Swedish cleansers, while the Finns carried their gear with casual confidence, eager to get down to work.

Lalli had gotten a half-hour crash course, in which Emil had tried to teach him the absolute necessities of riding a horse. The devil in question was now loosely tied to Orsa's gate by its lead, alongside the creature that Emil had easily swung up astride when trying to illustrate the basics. Lalli was glad that a lifetime of hauling himself through ruins and up trees had at least given him the strength to pull himself up onto the huge creature he'd chosen, after Emil had checked its saddle and whatever else all the straps and things were going around its girth. It would have been too embarrassing to fail at the very first step.

Sitting atop the thing had felt unnatural, though. Being high off the ground wasn't frightening to Lalli, but being at the mercy of another living creature and having his feet stuck in stirrups that he could already tell would get him stuck if he needed to leap off—he didn't like it. As Emil had stood beside the horse, adjusting those stirrups so that they were the right length for Lalli's feet to sit in them, Lalli had tried to suggest not using them at all.

Emil had given him a look—which one part of Lalli had relished, since he didn't often get to look down at Emil from such an angle—and told him he would be thankful for the stirrups when he wanted to give his backside a break after hours in a saddle. He'd also insisted on tossing an extra sheepskin over the saddle, with dire warnings of how much damage he'd done to himself as a new rider. "Don't push it too hard. Believe me when I say that you will be miserable for days or weeks if you do. Try to keep your posture like I showed you, and dismount and walk whenever you think you might be getting sore." The rueful grin on his face did dangerous things to Lalli's control when he added, "It's probably good you're staying with Tuuri. While I'd be happy to help you treat the, ah, problem areas, I'm afraid I'd be more likely to make things worse."

Now Emil was doling out his warnings to another group of novices, and it was the new Swedish cleansers' turn to get one of his lectures. Lalli listened with half an ear as he eyed the black behemoth he would be stuck with the rest of the day, and even longer as well. It tossed its head with a snort, as if it could tell what he was thinking about it. Perhaps he shouldn't have let his stubborn pride get the better of him, driving him to pick the most troublesome creature in the stable. A stupid animal would have probably been easier to control. Stupid humans normally were.

"Since you all are outnumbered by the Finns four-to-one, and I don't think you speak much Finnish, there are few things you should remember that you weren't taught in training," Emil was explaining. He lifted his hand to his mouth and whistled sharply. Three short high notes. Some of the Finns who had been checking out their gear rather than paying attention to the Swedish nonsense jerked their heads up in surprise. Emil waved a hand to reassure them that it was only a demonstration. "Three high notes means danger. Likely something is coming at you. Look up, find it, and either get ready for a fight or run the other way."

Fitting his fingers between his lips again, he whistled again. Two high, one low, one high. "That is a call for backup. If you think you are able to be some help, head in the direction of such a whistle. If you think you would only get in the way, stay out of the way so that others can get there sooner." Raising his hand one last time, he whistled long and low, then let the note climb in pitch at the end. "And  _that_  means that the day is done."

There were some smiles on the young faces in front of them, as the new cleansers probably imagined how relieved they would be to hear those notes at the end of the day.  _They have no idea. Wait until they've been swinging an axe for eight hours._

"As the weeks go on, you'll learn more of these signals. But start by at least memorizing the ones that will tell you if you are in danger. Your Finnish counterparts are experienced in the field. And they have a mage on their side." He looked back toward Lalli, who was still standing off to one side of the crowd and several meters closer to the gate than anyone else. "If you haven't yet gotten the chance to meet him, Lalli Hotakainen has joined us from Finland to support this project. He is a scout and a mage in the Finnish army. He and I went to Denmark together during the Silent World expedition."

This little tidbit was met with some whispers as the new recruits muttered to one another. Either they hadn't before realized who Lalli was or what he did. Emil plowed right over them either way. "Maybe you aren't sure what it means to be a mage. I wasn't either, the first time I met one. The only thing you really need to understand at this point is that mages can tell when there are trolls nearby. If Lalli signals danger, you'd better believe there is a real threat in the area. If he ever tells you to run, you run if you value your life. You can consider that a standing order from me."

After that Emil moved on to explaining the more mundane procedures, briefly reviewing how the Swedish trio system worked and how it would be applied to this project. He looked to Lalli once more, this time clearly expecting a bit more than just a blank look in response. Lalli reluctantly stepped forward to translate the message into Finnish for everyone else. Tuuri was already making herself busy singlehandedly taking over the logistics of the project. Last he'd seen of her, she had been making sure that all the bags and tents got loaded onto one of the horse-driven wagons they would use to keep moving things north along the line.  _So I do what I have to_ , Lalli thought as he repeated the instructions in Finnish, standing at Emil's side. With a quiet sigh, he realized that was going to become a familiar refrain on this project.

 

 

The groups had all spread out along the line, carefully keeping clear of the tracks until the morning train had gone roaring past. Lalli had clambered up onto his borrowed horse. It would have seemed more obvious to lead the thing at a walk when all of the Swedish sergeants and above were riding their horses. Even Teemu was riding and looking quite at ease. This was his third project in Sweden, after all.

Luckily the thing had started plodding forward when he kicked his heels into it the way Emil had showed him to. Lalli was sitting stiffly in the saddle, as if he could keep all his weight off the animal if only he held himself tight enough. Then he remembered that he wasn't supposed to let his back stifffen or else, well, something would happen. He'd already forgotten half of what Emil had told him.

He forced himself to slowly exhale, trying to relax. And  _then_  Lalli realized that, in his effort to remember a dozen different bits of advice just to stay on this stupid creature, he had utterly forgotten about his prayers. Would his own senses have alerted him if there was any sign of a beast? Anywhere over the dozens of meters that the cleansers were already spread out across? Cursing steadily under his breath, Lalli felt his temper growing blacker and blacker.  _There's no way this is going to work._  He was thinking about the project primarily—but the project not working could mean he and Emil not working. And that was something Lalli wasn't prepared to accept.

Still, it was already obvious that standing in one spot and praying wasn't going to be the answer this year. That might be how they did things in Finland, but this wasn't Finland. Prayer depended on the gods' power, and it was both harder and less reliable for him to call upon them here. Maybe it would have been enough for an area of a hundred meters or so. Then he could count on his sharp eyes as a second line of defense. But he could not see the entire line here, and he risked being too far away to help even if he did realize there was a problem.

Lalli had a rough idea in mind of what he was going to have to do. He was bracing himself to begin, his eyes squeezed momentarily shut, when the sound of another horse cantering up to him broke through his focus. Tensing all over, Lalli turned to look over his shoulder. He didn't know whether to feel relieved or annoyed when he saw that it was Emil. But Emil looked as worried as Lalli felt. And Emil's face still bloomed with delight when Lalli's eyes met his. And he still loved Emil in a way that went beyond any reason and, as he'd proved before on numerous occasions, beyond even his own self-interests.

"How is your first morning in the saddle going?" Emil asked, pulling alongside him and slowing his horse to a walk. His smile was sheepish, and Lalli was as useless at resisting its pull as he'd been at 19. He sighed and shrugged.

"Still some things to work out," he said shortly. There was a pained unhappiness in Emil's eyes, though, and Lalli cast about for something he could say to take it away. Finally he managed, "At least horses don't seem to cause motion sickness."

A surprised smile flashed across that familiar face. "I hope not," Emil agreed. "Though it might be different if you ever manage to move at anything other than a sedate walk."

Lalli said nothing to the jibe. Perching gingerly on top of the creature was enough of a challenge for him now, especially when he was trapped between the distraction of the job he was supposed to be doing and the presence of Emil riding beside him in the morning sun. "Shouldn't you be killing a tree somewhere?" he asked waspishly.

Emil gave a short laugh. "Yes, I really should be. I just saw you and wanted to see how you were doing." He looked out over the groups working on either side of them and frowned at whatever he saw. Lalli followed his line of sight but didn't know what was causing the expression. "You're doing okay, though?" Emil asked in a distracted voice, his eyes narrowed at a group of young Swedes to their right. When Lalli murmured an agreement, Emil glanced back at him once and offered a brief but genuine smile. "Good. Keep your heels down. I'll check in on you later when I can."

Before Lalli could say a thing, Emil had turned his horse's head and led it the few short meters between them and the group that had caught his attention. Adjusting his grip on the reigns in his hands, Lalli tried to get his own mount to follow in Emil's footsteps. He didn't plan to go all the way up to the cleansers, but he was curious what it was that Emil had seen that had bothered him. Being so close to the action in such a project was a new experience for Lalli, and he found it a more appealing one than riding a horse.

Lalli watched as Emil swung down from his saddle and called out to the group, making sure they stopped swinging their axes before he stepped up behind them. Emil lifted a hand in friendly greeting and the kids lowered their axes to the ground with expressions equal parts awe and dread.

"Looks you two are getting a good start all ready," Emil called out as he stepped up to the cleansers and slapped one on the shoulder. Lalli recognized the third gaping fool, standing farther off from the two who had been using their axes, as the one he'd bullied into opening the gate the night before. "It's going to be a long day, though, and only the first of many, so don't wear yourself out with all your strongest blows the first morning!"

Emil was turned the other way, so Lalli could only hear the smile in his voice but he could perfectly imagine the expression that he would have plastered on his face to reassure the younger cleansers. "Remember what you learned in training," Emil went on, pausing a moment to ask one of the young men if he could borrow his axe. "You want to get as much wood out as you can in the smallest number of strokes, so that means you want to keep on switching angles. Hitting right rather than hitting hard. You probably never got to see it up close in training, though."

He hefted the axe and waved the kid a safe distance away. Then he let the axe fly, swinging it up nearlyto the height of his shoulder and attacking the tree with an overhand blow that bit into the trunk at an angle. After a couple hits, he effortlessly switched tactics, and Lalli watched for a second before he realized what was different. Now the axe stayed low and level, cutting straight into the wood below the angled cuts Emil had made before. He moved back and forth between the two swings, and large chips of green wood flew away from the quickly growing notch.

In less than a minute, it looked as though some beast had come by and taken a huge bite out of the tree. Emil stopped for a moment, wiping his brow as he looked around. He pointed with the axe as he asked the its original owner, "That's probably the clearest direction to drop it in, wouldn't you say?" The trio of young cleansers nodded dumbly, probably having no idea if it were true or not. Lalli was more interested in the way that Emil framed the questions. He didn't accuse the new cleansers of failing to learn what they should have in training. He acted as though he was just confirming what he was sure they already knew.

 _Sigrun did that to him. Assumed he knew how to take on the Silent World, and helped him fake it until he really did._  It was a gentler teaching method than Lalli was used to, but maybe a good one. Lalli certainly hadn't enjoyed any of the lectures and scoldings and silent disappointment that had been the bread and butter of his own training.

Lalli  _did_  enjoy the way that Emil's strong arms swung the axe as he began notching out the opposite side of the trunk. He'd had those same arms braced to either side of him countless times, as he looked up at Emil from some mattress or bedroll. He knew the feel of those muscles shifting below his hands. He knew how they trembled at times with the strain as Emil tried to keep hold of his control, as precarious as a fraying string, not wanting to move too fast or hurt Lalli. And Lalli knew just how to snap that thread by arching up to bite Emil where his neck met his shoulder or by letting his hands wander south, fingers clenching into Emil's backside as he forced their bodies closer. Then Emil was hopelessly lost.

Blinking rapidly, Lalli came back from the thoughts that had momentarily taken him kilometers away from the forest north of Orsa. He had been in a safe bedroom in an apartment far away in Östersund, but his attention was needed here. Carefully turning the horse's head by tugging on the reins in his hands, Lalli kicked in with his heels and tried to direct the creature away from Emil and his distracting arms. Now was the time for work, and the work alone was going to take everything he had to give.

 

 

By the start of the third day, Lalli was getting used to the rhythms of the Swedish camp. Every morning, he and Tuuri stowed their blankets and belongings back in their packs. They undid the tent poles and cords and fit them back in the tent's bag, tossing all of the things in the large pile that formed in the center of the settlement each morning. Every day two trios were assigned to camp duty, which provided a sort of "day off." Those trios would help the cooks with getting food out to everyone and then with cleaning up the dishes afterward. They would load all of the belongings onto the horse-drawn wagons that crept up the line after the cleansers each day, then collected the sensors from around the camp.

As Lalli kept an eye on everything else, he would notice the small little progression of the camp helpers, the cooks, the doctor, and Tuuri creeping north at some point mid-morning and normally follow along near to them until they reached the spot they chose to stop in. Then the trios would set up preliminary sensors and help the cooks set up their work space for lunch prep. Lalli normally left once the sensors were up, but when he was at the north end of the work, he noticed how the daily helpers would clear the space for the camp and lay out tents and bags for the tired cleansers to claim at the end of each day.

Most of the Finnish cleansers were still a bit uneasy about camping out in the uncleansed lands without any walls or physical defenses to protect them, but they were getting more used to it and they were all so exhausted at the end of the day that their worries were hardly keeping them up at nights. And still. Lalli had seen the markers that they passed along the railroad tracks as they crawled north. They had barely just passed the first kilometer marker the evening before. Emil's hopes of making a kilometer a day seemed, if anything, even more impossible now than they had the first morning.

It was a shame, because their progress would have been impressive under normal circumstances. Especially considering that all the Swedes were as green as the spring growth, and the Finns were working in an unfamiliar environment. But that still wouldn't matter if they failed.

Every morning, Lalli began the day with prayers and offerings to his gods, asking for their blessing and for the strength to do what he needed to do. Because once the cleansers started moving, Lalli called on his luonto, summoning impossibly thin shades of it which he sent prowling off in each direction.

They weren't strong enough to attack anything, should they come across a real threat. Lalli couldn't maintain that many projections at once, not for hours at a time. Even what he was doing now strained his mental control so much that he usually had no idea where he was on the line or what was going on around him. He let the black horse wander wherever it might want to as his mind was pulled in eight directions at once.

It wasn’t unusual to send out one's luonto to travel far distances, whether to scout out a location or to send a message. It _was_ unusual, though, to maintain multiply projections for the course of an entire day, day in and day out. This was only day three, and Lalli felt the strain that morning when he sent the lynxes out for their ghostly prowl. He felt hollow in an odd way that made his shoulders naturally hunch inward.

But it worked, and so Lalli would keep doing it. The luonto acted like extensions of himself, expanding the range over which he could feel for the presence of beasts or trolls. The voices became a bit dimmer than unusual, as he spread himself too thin, but he could hear for miles. Standing in the middle of a wide field of dim chatter, Lalli could direct his attention to the flares that stood out to him like red beacons in a field of hazy mist.

When one seemed too close to a group of his humans, Lalli would rein in his mental net so that he could gather a bit more focus. Enough to tug the horse in the right direction, and go alert the closest cleansers in either Finnish or Swedish. He would slide down from his black monster and stalk on foot into the woods, sometimes backed by a few cleansers, and go take care of the threat. Then it would be time to haul himself back up into his saddle to start the whole thing again.

Each encounter took a little more out of him until, by the time evening rolled around, he was nearly incapable of speech. When the whole crew came streaming into the nightly camp after Emil signaled the end of the day, Lalli would sidle past the crowds getting their food and find the tent that Tuuri had already set up for them. When she arrived sometime later, with food for his dinner, he would rouse himself long enough to take a few bites, mumble some thanks, then fall back into sleep. He didn’t even notice missing Emil.

 

 

By the end of day four, they’d made it past the second kilometer marker north of Orsa. Lalli was dozing against a tree, his rifle in the crook of his arm. He had been stumbling back into camp to find his tent when he'd passed by Emil going the other way. It had taken him a moment to make sense of that fact. "Where are you going?" he'd asked stupidly, trying to remember how to speak and not just grunt.

Emil had seemed surprised. "Just going to work a bit longer. There's still at least an hour or two of light left."

"By yourself?" Lalli had asked, only to get a shrug in response.

"Just for a bit." Emil had reached out and squeezed his shoulder for a moment.  "Get some rest. I'm afraid we still need you tomorrow."

Then Emil had been stepping around him to leave. Lalli's hand had shot out quicker than he'd thought he was still able to move in his stupor, but he had caught Emil before he was out of reach—which was good because he didn't think he could have jogged even a few feet after the Swede in his current state. "You shouldn't be out there alone."

Emil had stopped, taking hold of Lalli's arm and steadying him. Even now, his eyes closed and the feel of the rough bark behind his back, Lalli hated to think how bad he must look if Emil had thought he needed the help. Emil understood him well enough. He would have known he was risking Lalli's angry pride by making it seem like he couldn't be trusted to stay on his own two feet. But Emil had done it anyway, and Lalli had been too tired to be offended.

But when Emil had let slip that he'd been out alone the night before without any harm befalling him, Lalli had been galvanized enough to drag his feet in the opposite direction of his tent and follow his lover back to the edge of the cleared area. Emil had tried to talk him out of coming, but he failed. He _did_  manage to convince Lalli to sit down and rest and only move if he felt something getting too close to them, though. So Lalli drifted on the cusp of sleep, the thwack of Emil's axe somehow as steady and soothing as a heartbeat beneath his ear when it filtered through the fuzzy layers of his consciousness.

Nothing got too close. Emil worked until the twilight was making it impossible to see what lay in the path of the trees he was felling. Then he slid his axehead into its leather sheathe, slung it over his back, and knealt down grab Lalli. With one arm wrapped around his back and the other tugging Lalli's thin arm over his shoulder, he pulled Lalli to his feet. The butt of the axe bumped into Lalli's side and the sharp smell of sweat filled his nose as he was half-led and half-carried back to the camp, where he could be deposited safe in his tent, covered with a blanket, and left with one fleeting kiss to slip back into Uni's hold.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no! No silly horsing lessons here, I'm afraid. Just the grueling misery of work. Life imitates art...?


	9. Chapter 9

_And you don't have to care, so don't pretend_  
_Nobody needs a best fake friend_  
_Oh oh oh don't hide it_

       - Best Fake Smile, James Bay

 

 

9 TUURI

 

 

There was a knock on the table and Tuuri jumped, looking up in surprise. Her reflexive smile froze behind her Haz-Mask when she saw that it was Elis, the young cleanser who might or might not be stalking her. “Hello, Elis,” she greeted him cautiously. “What are you doing here?”

“My trio is on camp duty today,” he explained, with a slight smile. At least he was being good-natured about the fact that she hadn’t even noticed that he was one of only six cleansers helping load up all of the tents and bags on the wagons that had carried their goods a further 600 meters north that day. He’d also probably been among the ones to pack up the portable radio that she was sat at now, in fact, on a folding table in the middle of the temporary camp.

It was their sixth move north of the city. Emil had given her little more than a wave as he left her to it this morning. It had quickly become completely normal between the two of them that she would handle pretty much everything that came with actually _running_ the project, while he just tried to keep driving it north as quickly as he could. She corralled whatever cleansers were left around each morning and got them moving everything that needed moving, and he galloped back to the northern line to let out his frustrations on another innocent tree or twenty.

The sensors had already been set up for the day, three layers of them extending out along the perimeter of the site at 5, 10, and 20 meters. Only the middle set was live so far, fed by the generator that was humming along to also power the radio that Tuuri sat at. The generator was getting a bit light, but the afternoon train would make a brief stop to supply them with food and fuel that day. The train slowed and stopped like this almost every other day, dropping off whatever supplies the project needed at the expense of an extra five minutes commute time for the civilian passengers. It seemed the Swedes were happy enough to swallow the delay if it meant they got a safe way to move between their nice modern cities.

As grueling as the schedule seemed to be on the cleansers, Tuuri had to admit that the way things were handled here in Sweden was far more convenient than the cleansing project she had been a part of the year before in Finland. The daily trains passing along the tracks meant that they could travel light. Food and additional supplies could be brought in within the day, so they had to carry little more than their packs and tents and basic field equipment. The cook staff had already set up their kitchen for the day and were preparing lunch, and the doctor had set up her tent—which she had to share at night with the senior cook—and laid out all of her equipment in case an emergency should come racing into the camp. Once they were all settled in for the day, life in the camp was...well, it was almost idyllic.

Lunchtime normally rolled around soon after they got settled at each new site, and the sweaty cleansers would stream in for a quick thirty minutes of refreshment before they went right back out into the field. The six remaining in camp would work on clearing out a good amount of space for everyone to sleep, but it was nothing like the work of chopping down trees all day. Then they would sort out belongings and tents and distribute laundry bags—laundry bags! The cleansers could send sacks of dirty laundry back down to Mora every other day to be cleaned for them at the base there! It was certainly a very different kind of setup than she’d gotten used to in Eno.

The only thing she did miss, amid the civilized wonders of Sweden, was a good sauna. The light, temporary camps the Swedes made meant that they didn't bother with constructing anything so substantial at each stop. They would bathe in the river, whenever they were close enough to it, or else suffer through a few days of being sweaty and smelly. Tuuri had been relieved to see that any number of lakes dotted their path north to Sveg. She for one didn’t plan to go weeks without bathing.

Today she had settled down at the portable radio, which she’d set up on a small folding table, to try to continue her quest to track down more tents for Emil. She hadn’t gotten very far. A number of the offices that she’d reached at various bases had refused to deal with her once it became apparent that she wasn’t even a member of the Swedish army. She wasn’t giving up yet—but she wasn’t thrilled to be faced with yet another obstacle to her progress, this time in the earnest face of the dark-haired cleanser.

“Did I hear correctly,” Elis hazarded, “that you are still trying to get more tents up from Mora?”

Tuuri sighed and set down her pencil. Apparently he was planning to make this a conversation and not just a quick greeting in passing. “That’s right. We do still need a number of tents. Not only to give those who were promised private tents their due, but also in case any might get damaged or worn beyond repair.”

“Perhaps I could be of some help?”

She fought to keep her smile from being too condescending. The boy was eager to please, but he obviously had no idea what she was dealing with. “You’re very sweet, and you were a great help with my tent before, Elis, but this is a little different.” Trying to gentle the blow, she gave him a little pat on the hand where he still had his palms flat on the table. “You would probably be more help to the other cleansers.”

He reached past her hand more swiftly than she would have expected, picking up her sheets of notes. As he flipped through them, he kept talking in that sheepish tone. “I wish that were so. But there’s little left for us to do here but stand watch. So unless someone is going to point me in the direction of a tree that I can cut down, I’m quite a loose ends.” He was running one finger down her lists as he muttered, “Even then, I doubt I’d be much help. I was hardly the first in class in training.”

Plucking the headset from around her neck, he pinned one earpiece between his head and shoulder as he adjusted the radio’s frequency with the ease of experience. “This, however, is something I do know how to do.”

The crackling static from the radio was replaced by a human voice, and Elis answered it at once in a warm tone. “Ronja! It’s me, Elis. Yes, yes, up on the line.”

Tuuri couldn’t make out all the words coming through the earphones, but the tone of surprise was unmistakable. Whoever Elis had reached seemed quite delighted to be hearing from him. Tuuri realized her mouth was hanging open, and she snapped it shut.

“No, I am not regretting a thing. Except, perhaps, the lack of tents. Have you heard anything about that?”

She could only make out about every third word, but she understood that the woman on the other line was griping about how their office had been pestered several times about the tent situation.

“Ronja, please. You know we must have something tucked in a corner somewhere. What about the old tents that we’ve had thrown in storage for years, ‘for repairs,’ only no one ever gets around to repairing them?”

More hemming and hawing came through the line, and Elis pressed the headset tighter to his head, leaning on the table. “No one is going to miss them. No one else even remembers they’re there. Come on, Ronja. Ask Sigge to get them to that brother of his who works for the train line, and I’m sure they can ‘accidentally’ end up mixed into the next supply load heading north. Along with several yards of canvas and some needles and thread, I hope. I’ll take it from there.”

The protesting was growing weaker, and Elis seemed to know exactly the final nail to drive into the coffin. His tone shifted, a hint of sly promise in it as he suggested, “Ronja? If I find any books in the houses out here, they’re yours. I promise. I’ll give you the first pick.”

There were several long moments of silence, and then a quiet word that must have been a ‘yes,’ because Elis silently lifted one fist in the air in victory. “Ronja, you’re a saint. If heaven doesn’t reward you, then I will. I swear it.”

With a few more grateful farewells, he disconnected the call and let the headset slide from his shoulder to fall into his hand, a motion that had obviously been practiced quite a few times.

“What,” Tuuri asked in disbelief, “was all that?”

The embarrassed look on Elis’s face at least was familiar. “Ah, well, I worked at Borlänge before I joined the cleansers. I only left last fall, so I still know a lot of the people there.” He pushed his heavy hair back in a nervous gesture, his eyes meeting hers once before sliding away. “I’m sorry for not offering earlier. I didn’t really realize that first day what it was that you and Emil—I mean, Captain Västerström—were after. If I had, I probably could have tried calling earlier.”

As Tuuri continued to gape, he flushed. "Sorry. I should have said something earlier. Right? I mean, obviously."

She caught herself and shook her head. "No, it's fine. It was just surprising to hear..."

Elis cocked his head to the side. "That I wasn't always a brainless cleanser, only good for burning the world down?"

There was a teasing note in his question, and Tuuri was feeling so off balance that she didn't know how to respond to it. "I never...ah..."

He chuckled. "Never thought I didn't fit in around here? Maybe I make a more convincing cleanser than I thought. I was pretty sure that everyone must take one look at me and still see a useless paper pusher."

"You're new to cleansing?" As soon as the question left her mouth, Tuuri wanted to kick herself. She knew the answer, of course. This conversation had her stumbling all over herself, though. "I mean, I know you're one of the new recruits," she hastened to add. "I meant, you were doing something else before enlisting?"

"Other than working at the base?" His lips quirked up in a little smile, and Tuuri felt more stupid and awkward than ever. It wasn't a feeling she was used to experiencing at the ripe age of 27. "Well, I did work at a hotel for a couple years before that."

"A couple...years?" Tuuri repeated faintly.

"It was all the same sort of work at both places, though. Bookkeeping, accounting, that sort of thing. It's not exactly glamorous work, but you do get to meet different people. When budgets came due at the base and none of the figures seem to come up right, oh, I was ever so popular in Borlänge.” He laughed at himself. "By which I mean that most people fled when they saw me coming. But I did make at least one or two friends in most departments."

"But you're..." Tuuri’s face scrunched up. She wondered if sitting under the bright sun had gotten to her. She muttered, rubbing her hand over her eyes once, “I'm sorry. I'm just having a hard time following the history here..."

He'd been a bookkeeper at the base? At his age? Even in Keuruu, they weren't that desperate. She hadn’t been given any tasks more important than copying down memos and transcribing reports until she was at least sixteen. And he claimed he'd already been working a couple years before that. She had heard that the cleansers took recruits as young as 13, but did businesses and offices in Sweden also hire people that young? She'd thought it was only the Cleansers Corps. They didn't tend to attract the most thoughtful members of society anyway. They didn't care if you were old enough to know what you were doing.

Elis seemed to be flushing, though it was hard to tell in the bright sunlight. "You want the whole sorry story? Fine. I graduated from school, took up a thrilling—by which I mean excruciatingly boring—job in a hotel for nearly three years, realized I was wasting my life away, moved to the military, realized not long after that I'd simply arrived at a new way to waste my life, still without accomplishing anything that I'd set out to accomplish, and finally I signed up for the cleansers. I hope this time I made the right decision for once."

"But you're..." Tuuri waffled again.

"What?" 

"A kid!" The word burst out of her, almost beyond her control.

“Ah...hah.” The baffling cleansers's face definitely burning this time, as he slowly drew his hands back from the radio table. “I see. It seems there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding here." One side of his mouth curled up in an awkward smile. "How old exactly do you think I am?"

 _Obviously older than I had assumed._ Answering seemed impossible now. If she guess too young, she would insult him even more. But how old could he really be, with a face like that?

"Twenty?" she hazarded, thinking she was being generous.

"Five."

Tuuri blinked. "What?"

"My age. I'm 25. Well, I'll be 26 this year, in fact, but not for another six months."

"You're lying." The words burst out of her, and she clapped her hands across her mask too late. “I mean...but...25? Are you really?”

With a pained smile on his boyish face, the novice cleanser—who was apparently older even than her cousin—nodded and admitted, "I'm told—if I’m to believe the scorn heaped on me by my training officer—that I was the oldest recruit the Swedish Cleansers Corp had seen in over a decade. Despite all appearances to the contrary.”

Tuuri was still speechless, her face slowly suffusing with a hot rush of blood. She had almost two years on him still, but that didn't make it any less humiliating to realize that she'd been treating an apparently capable adult like an overeager child. Suddenly she tried to remember every dismissive comment she had doled out. "I'm so sorry," she mumbled, her hands still over the breathing appartus covering her mouth. "I didn't think..."

"No, clearly not." As it had every other time she had talked to him, Elis's smile didn't falter, and his dark eyes sparkled with mirth despite his blush. "I guess maybe when I'm older I'll have to be thankful for my youthful looks. Ask me again when I'm fifty." He crossed his arms tightly across his chest and laughed ruefully. "But I'm not feeling too thankful at the moment."

 

 

"Can you believe it?" Tuuri had her face buried in her arms as she leaned over the table. "I thought I would die of embarrassment! And that wasn't even the worst of it!"

Someone cleared their throat pointedly and she looked up to find the grumpy cook, that one called Liv, standing beside her with an armful of bowls waiting to be cleaned. Tuuri moved to the side to let her pass, muttering an apology. Lalli watched the women going about their work, one cheek plastered to the table and his face turned to the side so that his eyes could follow what was going on without having to move. He looked either bored or tired. It was hard to tell with Lalli sometimes. Probably tired, though.

She carried on relating the story to him in Finnish, though she managed to wail a little less obviously this time. "So he ended up telling me half his life story. He had been working at a hotel in Mora—he said he'd always wanted to see the world, and that was the closest he could get to actually traveling to other lands—when our expedition happened."

Lalli grunted, still keeping his face turned to the side to watch as Tilde beat furiously at a small bowl she had put a hunk of butter into. It was turning whiter as she did so.

"That was when he first learned about us." Tuuri sighed, remembering just how she'd felt when she had heard the tale from Elis, after she had finally stopped stammering apologies. "Apparently he was so ashamed to realize that you and Emil, not even his own age, had been out there taking on the Silent World that he quit his job and enlisted in the military. He worked as a bookkeeper at one of the Mora bases for the past four years. Then when he heard about Emil becoming a captain, well... He said he realized that he was still no closer to any of his dreams of seeing the world than he'd ever been. So then he signed up as a cleanser."

Tilde was sifting vanilla sugar into her bowl now, beating it together with the fluffy butter. She'd dumped a good half a cup into the bowl, which was really more generous than they'd had any right to expect. "Apparently he also went to the same school as Emil," Tuuri dropped, her eyes on Lalli. As she'd expected, that got a reaction at last. He stiffened and his eyes narrowed as he turned them toward her. "He said he doesn't think Emil remembers him, but he remembers Emil."

Now that she finally had her cousin's attention, she watched slyly. She still hadn't told him about her other surprise for the night. "You should chat with him sometimes. Find out some old stories about Emil. Oh, you could tease him mercilessly, I bet!"

The brief look of interest disappeared, and Lalli went back to looking bored. Or tired. Whichever one it was, he shrugged against the tabletop. "I don't need stories from other people."

Tuva dropped a plate of pancakes on the table inches from his face, and he only flinched.  _Just tired then,_ Tuuri thought. It he had been feeling himself, he would have probably jumped a meter into the air. "Bring that frosting here," Tuva commanded her second, and Tilde stepped up to the table with her bowl in hand, lifting her whisk once to check the consistency of her concoction. She handed the bowl over to Tuva, who tsked at them even as her thick-knuckled hands never paused in her work. "If you'd just told me sooner, we might've been able to put together something better. What do you expect us to do with nothing but a bit of breakfast fixings? Next train's not due till tomorrow afternoon, and you know the schedule as well as anyone here might, missy."

Tuva brandished her frosting covered knife at Tuuri. She had cooked up a large stack of Swedish pancakes. The cooks made dozens of them each morning, though they were never enough and so it was a first-come, first-served battle to get any if you wanted them. Tonight she was spreading a smear of frosting between each pancake as she layered them into a pile four fingers high. Then she covered the whole thing with more of the buttercream frosting that Tilde had made, moving in quick and sure movements as she smoothed around the sides and over the top. She cloaked the stack in her own sort of magic until anyone might really believe that it was a small cake perched upon the tin dish.

Liv came back to the prep area with her clean bowls still dripping water from the lake they were camped beside—and a handful of tiny wildflowers trapped between her fingers and them. The cake's illusion became even more convincing after she thrust the flowers at Tuva, and the old crone plucked off the tiny flowers to arrange them around the edge of the squat mound.

Tuuri beamed. Lalli had a peculiar expression on his face, and she thought he might be fighting to keep it blank. But he had to be feeling pleased with their surprise as well. She knew it.

"I can't imagine how it could ever be any better than this," Tuuri reassured the cooks. "Thank you so much!"

Her thanks were met with grunts and grumbles as the women set about cleaning up after their unexpected duty. Tuuri picked up the light dish between her two hands and turned to Lalli. "Ready?" she asked him.

Lalli's cheek twitched and he let his eyes fall shut for a moment, then he finally shoved himself up from the table. "Ready," he muttered, rolling his head about on his neck and rubbing his hands over his face once as though to try to rouse himself.

Tuuri led the way out of the cooks' tent and out into the night. They didn't have to go far to find Emil. He sat leaning over the small folding table that Tuuri used as her workstation during the days. He looked exhausted, face drawn as he traced one chewed up nail along the map on the table before him. And it was no wonder if he was exhausted.

When Lalli and Emil had disappeared together at dinner time a few nights ago, Tuuri had assumed that they were just trying to secure some private time for themselves—but then Emil's axe had rung out through the evening twilight and it hadn't stopped until the two of them came stumbling back into camp as dark fell. The next night, they'd been joined by another cleanser. The night after, two more. The number of cleansers who worked until the sun went down seemed to be slowly growing with each passing day, and Emil and Lalli hadn't taken a single night off.

So to pull off her surprise, Tuuri had been forced to ask Lalli—not generally known for his skill at subtle manipulation—to convince Emil that they both had to take at least this one evening off. Surprisingly, it had worked. Though the captain still appeared to be using his free evening to study the same land on a map that he'd been prevented from cleansing himself. He was bent with his face nearly pressed to the paper, a small lamp on the table beside him pooling a harsh wash of light upon it. It was easy to sneak up upon Emil in such a state, and Tuuri stepped right up beside him before she cried out, "Happy birthday!"

Emil jumped and turned to look at them both, blinking. "What?"

Tuuri sighed a long-suffering sigh and placed the cake plate right in the middle of his map, obscuring the rest of the lines drawn on it from him. "Emil, what day is it?"

His bright blue eyes unfocused a moment as his face scrunched up, and then understanding dawned at last. "Oh. _Oh._ I didn't even remember."

"Well, some of us did," Tuuri assured him as she pulled a folding camp stool closer to the desk to sit opposite her old friend. She caught her cousin's eye and nodded to another chair nearby. "So happy birthday, Emil."

His eyes had bags beneath them, and he looked at least as exhausted as Lalli did, but his smile was as bright as the sun that had already set for the day. "Thank you, Tuuri," he said, reaching across the table and squeezing her hand for a moment. He glanced at Lalli, who was settling himself upon a chair on the third side of the table, between Emil and Tuuri. "Thank you," Emil said again, softer, and Lalli settled his face on the heel of one his hands, waving his fingers dismissively with the smallest movement he could manage. He gave no greater acknowledgement that he'd heard Emil's thanks, but his gray eyes were fixed on Emil's blue ones.

Tuuri pulled out the fork she'd taken from the cooks and brandished it, presenting it to Emil like a precious gift. He laughed. "How did you even manage this?" he asked as he took the fork and admired the small cake from several angles.

"The cooks don't hate you enough yet," Lalli grumbled, still leaning tiredly on his hand but watching Emil with heavy eyes. "You should work on that."

Emil gave a wolfish grin. "If I don't thank them for this, I guess that might seal the deal." He jabbed the fork into the cake without hesitation. "I'm not fool enough to do that, though. Or to let this go to waste." He lifted a piece, not showing any surprise at the fact that the frosting had disguised a pile of thin Swedish pancakes, and closed his eyes in probably exaggerated bliss when he slipped it into his mouth. "Amazing." His eyes opened and he offered the fork back to Tuuri as he said, "I think Lalli might not be the only one capable of magic at this table."

Tuuri was almost as happy about the flattery as she was about the fact that Emil was offering her a bite as well. Watching the cake getting put together without sneaking even a lick of frosting had been about as painful as her conversation with Elis that afternoon. "You're sure?" she asked, holding the fork over the cake in a moment of token reluctance. Emil had barely nodded before she plunged it down and had a mouthful of cake between her lips. "Mmmmm!" She hummed in delight, her hands going to her cheeks as though she could keep the sweetness from melting away in her mouth. "We need more birthdays. Whose birthday is next?"

Emil laughed at her, and it was good to hear. There hadn't been much laughter from him since they'd arrived in Sweden. Lalli pulled out his small knife and carved out a small piece of cake, eating it daintily off of the sharp blade. Emil laughed again, leaning forward to settle on his elbows and watch them both. "What is it with you Hotakainens and sweets?" he asked teasingly.

"Try growing up without processed sugar," Tuuri shot back, sneaking one more small bite before offering back his fork. It only seemed appropriate, seeing as it was _his_ birthday and everything. He took it long enough to put a large bite in his mouth, then offered it right back to her. She loved him in that moment more than she had ever loved him before. "I've never been happier to welcome you into the family," she confided, taking the fork from him as she reached across the table.

Lalli choked on his cake, luckily not slicing his own face open with the knife he'd had at his mouth. Emil gave him an alarmed look but it eased when he saw that Lalli's shoulders were shaking with silent laughter. "That," the Finn asked, the hand holding his knife propped on the table for support, " _that_ is why you'd accept Emil into our family? Because he let you have a bit of this mess of a cake?"

"Oooh, don't let the cooks hear you say that, or you'll definitely secure the most-hated spot." Tuuri was grinning up until the moment she bit down on her next bite of cake and then her mouth was too occupied. Her eyes danced as she watched Lalli grumble and Emil reach across the table to wipe a bit of frosting from his cheek. She swallowed, then said, "And you'll forgive me. Because this wasn't my real gift."

Both men looked at her curiously after that statement, and she had to hide her smile as she got up from her chair and went over to the pile of things she'd left at her workstation at the end of her day. Lifting aside a few binders and maps, she drew out the unmistakable lumpy shape of a tent in its canvas bag. Carrying it back over to them, she dropped it heavily in Lalli's lap, and he caught it with a surprised grunt.

"A tent?" he asked, looking at her in bewilderment.

Emil leaned over the table to look at the bag in Lalli's lap. "Where did you get it?"

"I had a bit of luck today, thanks to an old classmate of yours." Emil looked utterly baffled, so Tuuri waved away his potential questions with one hand. "Don't ask, I'll have to explain again, and I'm too embarrassed to relive the whole thing another time tonight. The important thing is that we got a dozen extra tents up on the afternoon train today. They are in need of some patching, and we'll be getting to work on that tomorrow. But I thought this one might be wanted sooner."

Tuuri leaned back and basked in the growing wonder on Emil's face and the fierce light in Lalli's eyes. "It may have a few holes," she warned them. "But there's no rain expected tonight." Picking up the fork that Emil had forgotten, she speared another bite of cake. "So happy birthday, Emil. And you're welcome."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, Tuuri. :) It was fun and bittersweet to see you getting to be silly again.


	10. Chapter 10

_I'm halfway gone_  
_Sleepless, I'm battle-worn_  
_You're all I want_  
_So bring me the dawn_

     - Need the Sun to Break, James Bay

 

  
11 LALLI

 

 

It took them hardly five minutes to have scraped every bite of pancake from the plate and cleaned it of even one last lick of frosting by running their fingers around it. Tuuri did most of that, but Lalli could see that Emil didn't mind in the slightest. The birthday boy was watching the whole scene with quiet pleasure glowing in his bright blue eyes, which moved from Tuuri's blissful smile to Lalli himself. Lalli ran his thumb along the flat side of his blade to clean the last excess of frosting from it, then licked his skin clean. Emil's eyes darkened predictably, and even in his exhaustion, Lalli felt a surge of satisfaction.

Rubbing the knife once against the cloth of his trousers to get it as clean as it would be for the moment, he said, "I'll go get my things." There wasn't much question that he would be moving in with Emil now that a tent was available. He was so tired that it was hard to keep his eyes from crossing, but if it came down to the option of collapsing into sleep beside his cousin or his lover, he thought he could manage to stagger across the camp one more time with his sack of belongings.

When Lalli stood, Emil rose from his stool as well. "I'll help, if you can wait a moment?" He looked over the table, covered in maps, and picked up the cakeless camp plate. "I'll just get this back to the cooks, and put away the maps, then—"

"I'm not sure either of those tasks requires a captain's skill," Tuuri interrupted, reaching across the table to take the plate from his hand. "I'll clean this up. It's your birthday and besides, I'm not the one out there on my feet all day."

"But I should really thank Tuva and the others myself..." Emil's protest went largely ignored. Tuuri picked up the tent bag that Lalli had leaned against the table with her free hand, the other one still holding the tin plate.

"No, what you should really do is find a spot to pitch your tent." She awkwardly swung the heavy sack in his direction so that Emil had little choice but to grab it with both arms before she lost her grip. "You can thank the cooks personally in the morning, if you have to. I'll tell them how much you appreciated the cake tonight when I return the plate."

Lalli didn't wait to hear how the conversation ended. He was too tired to stay upright on his feet without moving, so he turned away with a short wave of farewell. At least every heavy step toward Tuuri's tent was like falling forward and the momentum could carry him onward. Emil called after him, "North!" Lalli waggled his fingers to signal that he'd understood the message but didn't slow or turn again as he shuffled away. It had taken the little willpower he had left for the day to force himself to his feet again, and he didn't dare stop if he was going to keep moving long enough to meet Emil for the night. It was his birthday. It was the least Lalli could do.

And he wantedto share even what little was left of the special day with Emil. He never had before. Lalli had been able to share three of his birthdays with Emil, in some way or another: a confusing and exhilirating evening shared once during the expedition, a brief moment in a ferry terminal a year ago that had nearly broken him, and a perfect night in Mora four months before that he had relived in his mind dozens of times in the months they'd spent apart.

They'd gone out to a fine dinner at a restaurant, an idea quite foreign to Lalli, and Emil had insisted on stopping by a fancy bakery on their way back to their hotel room. Emil had stood by his side and refused to help at all as he forced Lalli to pick out a cake for himself. When Lalli threatened to walk out of the shop, Emil had snaked an arm around his waist and dragged the mage back before him, resting his chin on Lalli's shoulder as he held him in place. "Pick a cake, Lalli. We're not leaving until you do," he had insisted in a soft voice. It had been infuriating—and Lalli had never felt more cared for in his life.

The cake had been delicious. The night had been delicious. While Lalli wasn't dependent on the soft luxuries of Sweden, as Emil undeniably was, he had found it all to easy to get used to the life he'd glimpsed with Emil that winter. The little treat that Tuuri had proposed may have been a cheap imitation, but Lalli had agreed at once. It hadn't mattered how tired he was. He had wanted to give back to Emil even a fraction of that feeling of being precious and worth spoiling in someone's eyes. So he would stumble back to the tent he and Tuuri had shared since arriving in Orsa, and with his clumsy tired hands he would pack up the blanket and bedroll that Tuuri would have laid out for him like every night, and he would go find Emil wherever he waited beneath the black night sky.

Lalli believed that. But when he got to the tent, he found that Tuuri's present had gone beyond the cake. Sitting just inside the tent was his pack, with bedroll and blanket neatly rolled up and strapped to it. He didn't have to do a thing but stoop without falling over to pick it up.

" _Kiitos, Tuuri_ ," he whispered, though she wasn't around to hear the words. She would know they were spoken all the same. Then he shambled off to search for the place where he was meant to be.

 

 

The arms gathering him up lifted him from the deathlike sleep he had fallen into, and Lalli groaned into shoulder beneath his face. "'Mil?" he mumbled, though the smell of the cleanser told him all he needed to know. The sound of his breathing, the shape of his soul—Lalli could have been blinded for life, and he would have known Emil.

He didn't know how long he had been asleep. He had staggered to the northern end of the array of tents, and his eyes had picked up the light of the small lantern at once. He'd made a beeline for it and found Emil just finishing with setting up the tent. The Swede had pushed him into the tent, taken his things, and had a bed made for him before Lalli even processed what was happening. "I could have..." he had begun to protest, but by then Emil had already been pushing him down onto the bed. Not for any exciting reason, but with a shushing noise and a quiet admonishment.

Then Emil had left to get his own things from the tent he had been sharing with his awful lieutenant. Lalli had meant to stay awake till he could return. He had tried his hardest, mulling over his worries as though tonguing over a sore tooth and hoping the discomfort would keep him alert. But he must have fallen asleep anyway.

Lalli snaked his arms around Emil's solid back, feeling the familiar bulk and warmth of him. His lips found a patch of bare skin, and he brushed a kiss against it. Emil ducked his head down to catch the kiss before Lalli could move. But then he gave Lalli a single, rib-cracking squeeze before loosening his hold and whispering, "Sleep, Lalli. I know you need your sleep."

He wanted to protest. He needed rest, but that didn't mean he hadn't missed Emil as well. But his tongue couldn't form the words. His eyelids were as heavy as if they were made of lead, and he couldn't manage anything more coherent than a keening whine. He felt Emil trailing a line of nibbling kisses his jawline, but Lalli couldn't stir himself to move as that soft voice reassured him, "We'll have other nights, other birthdays. All of them, I hope. As long as you don't get sick of me."

And before Lalli could figure out a way to break through the surface to disagree with the thought that such a thing was even possible, he found himself dragged down, against his will, into the depths of sleep once more.

 

 

The next time that Emil woke Lalli was less pleasant. It had been a long time since Lalli had experienced the terrors with him. The nightmares had hardly troubled his captain that winter, when they'd been safe in the city and going to bed each night with their minds whirring with sweet memories of another day spent together. But now they were back out in the woods again, back in the thick of the Silent World and all that entailed. It was different.

"It's not real," Lalli slurred, the words falling automatically from his clumsy lips as he struggled against sleep's tugging hold. He knew he had to say the words at least, even if his body was still too tired for him to lift his arms and hug Emil in reassurance. He pressed his face a little harder into Emil's musky shirt instead, rubbing it against the strong shoulder underneath.

"It's not real." Emil repeated the words in the ritual they had perfected the summer before. He wrapped his arms around Lalli's back, hands moving up and down to reassure him—or maybe them both. "This is real."

"This is real," Lalli agreed. As though he'd said the final words of some spell, the tension went out of Emil as soon as Lalli recited his last line. It almost always worked. Words had power, after all. The two of them remained loosely wrapped around one another as they drifted back to sleep, everything real and right again for the first time in months. Things were going to be all right from now on.

 

 

It took them two and a half days to reach Tallhed. Their daily progress was slowly creeping upwards, from averaging 500 meters a day to 600 at least. Part of it was because the days were getting longer. Emil continued to go out every evening, after work had officially ended, and he had collected a regular group of five or six young recruits who worked with him every night till it was too dark to be safe any longer. (Though one was not so young as he appeared, as Tuuri had discovered.) A few of the Finns pitched in as well, especially since they knew Lalli was there to interpret should anything come up.

Lalli still shuffled after Emil to the front line each night, after work had officially ended for the day, for these evening shifts. He didn't trust Emil to be alert to danger on his own, in the failing light, with how hard he was pushing himself every single day. And Lalli was _not_ going to lose Emil to some stupid attack now. They had both been working in uncleansed areas their entire adult lives, but this was the first time since perhaps the expedition that Lalli had felt acutely worried that something might happen to Emil. This project was being run all wrong. Lalli could see it all around him, as they lurched about in this wild race for progress. It was only luck that no disaster had befallen them so far, not skill or anything else. And luck always ran out.

So Lalli continued to watch over the cleansers until they gave up for the night, his eyes closed and every part of himself shut down except for his spiritual senses. And his presence meant that Emil would call it a night sooner than he probably would have if he were left on his own. Lalli could tell that Emil was worried about him, and he didn't do a thing to dispel that worry. At least this way Emil would actually stop working before it was full dark and return to camp to eat a late dinner, even if only to make sure that Lalli did the same. 

No one seemed to question that the two of them shared a tent now. Maybe people assumed it was simply that they were old friends. Or maybe they weren't as subtle or as quiet as Emil thought they were. It hardly mattered to Lalli. Emil was his, and he was learning that the longer that was so, the less inclined he was hide it.

Lalli saw how the young ones admired Emil. He saw even his countrymen growing grudgingly impressed by Emil's unflagging effort. And he had discovered something strange and new about himself, that he hadn't been aware of before: he wanted people to know that Emil was his. Lalli wanted the people who thought Emil was a good captain and a good man to know that Lalli had claim to him. He wanted them to see that Emil had chosen him above all others.

He remembered the way that Emil had wrapped his larger hand around Lalli's against the cold December air, as they walked back across the frozen river in Östersund months before. It had been a mix of giddy pleasure and burning self-consciousness, feeling as though everyone around might be staring and judging them by that one tiny, fluttering point of contact. Now Lalli wanted to take Emil by the hand and pull him back to their shared tent at the end of the day to tell them all:  _He is mine now. You all get him the rest of the day, but this is mine. And I will not share._

Lalli shook his head, shifting his rifle on his shoulder. He shouldn't be thinking of such things while he was scouting.

He'd convinced Emil to let him check Tallhed alone on his own while everyone else broke for lunch. In return he'd had to promise that he would take a rest and eat while they sorted through their explosives before descending on the former settlement. The compromise had been worth the peaceful half hour to himself and on his own feet again. While he'd gotten used to being atop the horse, and his sore muscles had gotten used to riding, he was much happier to be picking his way across the quiet landscape alone as he was most used to.

The small cup of paint he carried in his left hand was half empty when he dipped his brush into it and gently swabbed a "T" on the door of the ancient house he stood in front of. Once he had, he paused a moment, listening. But there was no sound of anything rousing itself from within the building, despite his senses screaming at him that he was just feet away from at least a troll or two.

He had marked all of the structures but one so far. There were only six structures left standing within the range they had to clear, though he had skirted past the remains of at least four other homes that must have been destroyed during the initial cleansing of the line. Those ones had been right up alongside the tracks, while these six had been far enough that they'd been ignored decades ago. Now that the Swedes were extending the perimeter, though, these houses would also need to be taken care of. No one wanted to leave ready-made troll nests within the new electric fences, once they went up.

Dropping the large paintbrush back in his cup, Lalli shifted his rifle strap just to feel the reassuring weave against his hand and backed away from the troll house. One more building, then it was back to the camp.

 

 

Lalli was still awake when Emil ducked into their tent, though he hadn't meant to be. When dinner had broken up, no one had felt much like an extra shift tonight, and Lalli hadn't been about to argue with the chance for a bit more sleep. But his restless thoughts had had different plans.

He held himself still as he listened with his eyes shut to the comforting rustle as Emil worked off his heavy boots and peeled off his socks. There was a famliar metallic clatter as the Swede pulled his belt from its loops and shuffled out of his trousers, tossing them in a pile on the empty side of the tent. Sleeping together with their two bed rolls pressed up against one another meant that their tent had more free space than most did, and it was there that their bags and things lived each night and that Lalli prayed in his mornings and evenings.

Emil lowered himself to their shared pile of blankets, slipping beneath the covers to gather Lalli up against him. "The doctor said he'll be just fine," Emil murmured, his toes running up and down against Lalli's calves. Lalli gave no sign that he'd heard a thing or was even awake, letting Emil hold him without moving. He kept his breath steady and slow.

"Don't want to talk about it?" Lalli felt Emil's lips on his forehead, brushing against his hairline. "Since I know you aren't sleeping anyway, if you don't want to talk, well, I can think of something else to do."

Lalli moved at last, to drive a knee into Emil's leg. He was careful not to hit too high, though. "It's not funny," he growled at his lover as Emil shook with an almost-silent snicker. When that didn't seem to dampen Emil's amusement, Lalli rolled over and put his back to the Swede. It didn't work as well as intended, since all Emil did then was drag Lalli into the curve of his body. What had started as a fit of petulant annoyance sparked into real anger and Lalli sat upright on the bedroll, freeing himself from Emil's hold as he looked down at the captain. "It's not funny," he repeated, and this time his voice entirely serious. "That boy will wear those scars the rest of his life."

Emil sat up and mirrored his position, leaning forward to peer at Lalli's face beneath the loose hair falling around it. "And that's a shame," Emil agreed, lifting a hand to push back a hank of that ash blond hair. "I'm sorry about Matias's face. I really am. It _is_ a shame. But it could have been a tragedy."

Lalli felt the way Emil tucked his hair behind his ear, that hand sliding around the back of his neck to draw him forward until their foreheads rested together.

"I know you feel like you have to prove something here. Like you'll be a failure if we lose anyone on this project. But you know what happens in the Silent World. And you're already doing far more than anyone could expect of you, Lalli." The words were like cool rain, trickling down over the hot, tight anger that had kept him tossing and turning alone in the tent for an hour. "That boy probably would've been dead now, if you weren't on this project. But you were here and you told them there was danger. They knew what they were walking into. What else do you expect of yourself? There's only one of you." The other hand had come up now, and Emil was cradling his head as he held Lalli in place. "And I need you. So please don't get any ideas about throwing yourself between every young recruit and the trolls they have to learn to face down."

"Maybe if they hadn't been depending on me to tell them where there was danger, they would have been more careful," Lalli muttered, speaking for the first time since he had snapped at Emil. The exhaustion which had left his temper paper thin seemed like it would press him flat until he was forced to his knees by it. "You know that."

"I do," Emil agreed. "You're right that they've become too dependent on you."

Lalli tried to pull back, but Emil only let him get a few inches away. He kept his hands looped around the back of Lalli's neck and peered at him with earnest eyes. "And that's my fault, not yours."

The sharp inhale was involuntary, but Lalli hadn't been expecting those words from Emil, whatever else he might have expected the Swede to say. "What?"

"I'm the one leading this project. I've seen what they're doing, and I let it happen anyway, because it meant we were moving faster and making up time." This time Emil's eyes dropped first, his lashes falling to hide them from Lalli's demanding gaze. "You didn't fail to protect Matias. I failed to teach him what he needs to know as a cleanser."

"The lieutenants—" Lalli began.

"Should be doing more to train their recruits. That's true. But I've seen that they aren't. And I let that go, too." Emil's voice was heavy and defeated. The playful teasing he'd tried to hide behind when he'd slipped into bed had evaporated. All that was left was the raw truth between them, and it only pained Lalli more when Emil said, "I know I'm asking too much of you. And of them. I don't want to do it, but if we don't reach Sveg by the time fall arrives..."

Emil's eyes were squeezed shut, and Lalli bit down on the inside of his lip. He wanted to reassure Emil—and he wanted to take a swing at him.  _Just say it. We both know it. You don't want to ask more of me, but you're going to. Because there's no way the project will succeed otherwise. You can claim that you want me to do less, to take care of myself, but you know that's not really an option._ His stare bore into Emil's downcast face, but the captain didn't look up at him. "Say it, Emil. Just _say_ it."

Lalli didn't realize at first that he'd spoken the words outloud, but then Emil sighed. "If we don't reach Sveg, then it'll have been for nothing." The Swede shook his head. "I wish I had some other answer, but I don't know what else to do. Do we give up on the project, and just take it safe and slow?" His eyes came up again at last to search Lalli's in the low light. "Tell me if that's what you want to do, and we'll do it. Whatever you want to do it, I'll do it."

Lalli was still for several long moments. He was afraid to move, as though the slightest motion would shake apart the threadbare control he had over his emotions. Too much. The day had been too much. The past few weeks had been too much. The sight of that boy's face cut open had been too much. What Emil was asking was too much.

And losing Emil would be too much.

He slowly lowered himself to the thin mattress on the tent's floor. "Then I want to sleep," Lalli said, shutting his eyes. He knew Emil thought he was helping. He knew the offer was mean out of kindness. And the weight of it was crushing him. Emil was making it his burden to decide whether they should try to make their relationship work or abandon the best shot they had at staying together. And he was too tired. He was simply too tired to take it. With his eyes closed, Lalli could just feel the prickle of tears at the corners of his eyes. "I choose sleep."


	11. Chapter 11

_Feels like I'm treading the water_  
_Trying to keep my head above the line_  
_I hear the sound of you get softer_  
_Lately you've been just so hard to find_

     - Heavy Handed, James Bay

 

 

EMIL 

 

  

A week later they made it to Ljothed. There were only a handful of buildings to be cleansed and destroyed. This time, although Lalli had scouted ahead in secret, they agreed that he would not mark the houses in any way to indicate if they were infested or not. The young cleansers still needed to learn to do their job, which meant surveying dangerous structures on their own with all the caution they would need to survive when they didn't have a mage or a cat within arm's reach. Quality cats were valuable and hard to come by, and a mage's insight might never be an option again, depending on how this little experiment went.

The winter prior, Lalli had doubted whether how he would be able to convince the Swedes on this project to put their trust in him. Emil had known that and had tried to supress similar doubts himself. But it turned out that they'd been worrying about the wrong thing entirely. The fresh graduates, still nervous about working out in the field, had been all too quick to put their faith in the Finnish mage. Maybe that wasn't so surprising. While they may have all grown up in a nation that thought "magic" was a silly superstition to scoff at, every time that Lalli had said there was trouble, there really had been. And there had never been an attack on the line when he hadn't raised an alarm first and been at the front line to face down whatever beast or other awful thing had been lurking in among the trees.

Faced with working in the wilds for the first time, it had probably been easier for the new recruits to rely on Lalli and believe that he would keep them safe than the alternative: to live in constant terror of the Silent World. Even the Finns now had full faith in him—though this was a fact that Emil had been forced to hear from Tuuri rather than from Lalli himself. She'd been the one to tell him over lunch one day that many of the Finnish cleansers had been wary at first about relying on just one mage to cover such a long distance. Not all of them had known him firsthand before this project. But they all knew of Onni, and it seemed word was spreading that there might be more than one great mage left among the Hotakainens.

When the time had come to let the cleansers slowly crawl through the abandoned structures in Ljothed, Lalli had warned them once that there were indeed trolls in some of the houses. Emil had reminded them to use what they had learned in their training. Then he had set out with the youngsters, leaving Lalli rooted to the ground near the train tracks with a bleak look on his face.

That expression had stayed in Emil's mind long after he turned away, but later he'd spotted Lalli prowling between the fallen timbers of the old houses. It seemed the mage hadn't been able to hold himself back entirely, even if he was biting his tongue and not telling any of the young Swedes which houses were the worst. The tense atmosphere rotated between strained silences and nervous chatter, punctuated with sudden yelps of fear and the occassional percussion of bullets. Although Lalli didn't interfere, he seemed to manage to almost always be nearby when one of the infested houses was being explored. Emil wouldn't be surprised to learn he'd been using a bit of magic to slow the trolls down, since the young recruits escaped the day without a single major injury. But somehow he didn't dare ask.

 

 

 

He found Lalli lying flat on his back on the sun-warmed boards of the bridge. They had reached Storstupet a little after noon, and Emil had given everyone the rest of the day off. It was the first break the entire crew had been given in the six weeks since work had begun, but they had earned it after tackling Ljothed and working two days straight to demolish every last structure in the former village. Plenty had chosen to head straight to camp and call it a day, but a good number of cleansers had picked their way down the steep cliffs to the Ämån below. They were spread out along the gravel bar that nearly spanned the river, splashing and cavorting like children. Which a number of them practically were.

Lalli didn't open his eyes or speak when Emil walked up to him and sat himself at the edge of the bridge, looking down over the large drop from railroad tracks to the riverbed far below. Emil was sure that Lalli must have heard him, must have felt the vibrations in the boards, but the silence stretched around them. It had been doing that lately.

Emil let out a small sigh, so quiet under his breath that even Lalli wouldn't hear it. He knew Lalli was frustrated with him and the whole situation. Emil had tried to offer him an out: he'd tried reassuring the mage that he wouldn't say a word of protest if Lalli was finding the burden too much. It only seemed to have made things worse.

_But then what was I supposed to do? Tell him it's a command and that he has no choice but to do things my way? Order him to stop, and work in the normal Swedish style, even if that won't get us to Sveg? Like his pride would let either one of us live with that..._

Lalli was a wonder to Emil in a hundred different ways, but that didn't mean that Emil was blind to his faults. If he'd told Lalli that he couldn't or wouldn't rely on his ability as a mage any longer to keep the entire crew safe, Lalli would have been furious. So Lalli continued to endlessly patrol the line each day. He continued to sit out with them every night as the growing crew worked until night fell—and night fell later and later each day. They could easily work till nine in the evening now before losing the light.

Reaching out, Emil hesitated a moment and then slipped his fingers through the loose strands that had fallen from Lalli's messy ponytail. The mage remained perfectly still, at least tolerating the touch even if he didn't give any sign that he welcomed it. That was enough. Relief surged through Emil for the moment. It wouldn't have been surprising for Lalli to slap his hand away. When he was in a foul mood, he could still be as prickly as he'd been at 19.

"You wanna head back to the camp?" Emil asked softly, feeling almost afraid to break the fragile peace.

Lalli gave a small jerk of his head, rejecting the idea. Emil glanced toward the river again. "Don't want to leave the kids out here without you?"

The silence was answer enough. Emil sighed again and ruffled Lalli's hair. "Fine then. But that means I'm rounding them all up and sending them back to camp in the next half hour, because this break is meant for you as well."

"Right."

The small word was quiet, but it was enough for Emil to know that Lalli was acknowledging what he'd said and not protesting any further. And Lalli let his head fall to the side, leaning into Emil's touch. The sunlight shone down on them, glittering off the winding river that cut through the valley diving beneath them. From up on the bridge, the shouts and chatter of the cleansers below was no more than a pleasant din, an indistinct soundtrack to a quiet slice of time that felt—if only for length of a heartbeat—like the days they had spent together that winter. Like the life they were meant to have. And Emil knew that he would keep fighting for it. 

 

 

 

The whistles came from out of the blue. At first Emil couldn't tell that they weren't simply the ringing in his ears, echoes of the sharp cries of the axe biting into the hard wood before him. But they grew louder rather than fading between swings. He turned and looked back in the direction of the other cleansers. He was working at the end of the line again, hoping to keep pushing even a little farther each day into the wilderness, and the closest trio was a dozen meters to the south.

Once his axe was still, the whistling kept echoing across the scrub in rhymthic swells. Two high notes, quick and sharp. Less than a second later, two more.

Emil spun on his heel, catching his axe by the neck and shoving it into the halter that he had slung across his shoulder even as his eyes went to his old nag. She was grazing a few meters away, and Emil sprang toward her, grabbing hold of the lines and hauling himself up into the saddle with a grunt. The whistles were still spreading, like ripples from a rock dropped in a still lake. He saw the nearest Finns looking about, abandoning saws and equipment as they began streaming back toward the train tracks. He was relieved to see some hurrying over to the nearest groups of Swedish cleansers and trying to drag them along by force.

"Fall back to the tracks!" He called as he rode past, hoping his young cleansers would hear him and that the Finns could wrangle them if not. "Leave anything that won't serve as a weapon, and fall back toward the camp!"

The signal wasn't one they'd gone over in those first days in the field. Emil had assumed that the general signal for danger would be all they would ever need, and they hadn't even used that so far. Lalli had always been so ready for any incursions that they didn't need to use it. He normally had time to warn those in the immediate area and get together a handful of cleansers to follow him into the woods and deal with any creature before it could get close enough to warrent an alarm. More often than not, he was aware of threats so far in advance that he had time to canter down to find Emil and ask if he wanted to be present to oversee things or not.

But this was different. The insistent pattern of two quick high notes was more than just a heads-up. It meant something so bad that everyone should retreat to a single safe location where they would be able to better defend themselves. It wouldn't be just a beast or troll. A pack of several, perhaps, or a giant or two. Or worse. And somewhere, wherever the danger was originating from, he would find Lalli. Emil already knew that as he galloped onward, shouting rushed instructions to the Swedish cleansers he passed and trusting that the Finns knew well enough what to do with themselves.

He counted the trios as he rode south. Nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen. Then the crowds moving south and the crowd hurrying north met, and he had reached the clump of nervous cleansers at the center of the line. They were circled around the "camp," though it was not much more than a pile of bags and equipment in one heap yet. There was a temporary shelter set up to provide cover over the cooking women as they worked on lunch. In the middle of the crowd, he spied Tuuri's ash blond head.

One of his trios should have been here with her, helping with the move. That left four more trios somewhere along the line. He scanned the numbers straggling toward the camp from the south, counting off each set of faces as he recognized them.  _There...and there... Two more... One more..._  Then they were all accounted for. The Finns would look after themselves. He couldn't communicate with any of them, even if he wanted to ask them whether they had all their numbers. Now he needed to find Lalli.

Bringing his horse about, he turned back in the direction he'd come from. "Eva! Lars!" His two lieutenants' heads snapped up, making them easy to pick out in the crowd. "Confirm your crews' numbers, then set up defenses. We need the generator up and running, fences set ten, fifteen, and twenty." His eyes swept the scene again, looking for Tuuri where he remembered seeing her shock of pale hair. She was still nearby, and he called out to her. "Tuuri, you know where all the equipment is. Help them, will you? Then interpret for Teemu and your crews so that everyone is ready for whatever's coming."

She nodded from across the distance separating them, her face tight. She looked so small among the crowd of sweaty cleansers, some stumbling around trying to dig through the daily pile of luggage to pull out more weapons while others stood frozen in place, looking lost. "You're going to find him?" she called out, her words carrying over all the heads. Emil gave a short nod, already tugging the reins in his hand to turn south once again. When he did, he came face-to-face with someone already rushing into his path, nearly colliding with his horse. The old nag danced to side, snorting, and her annoyance was nothing compared to Emil's own.

"Move, Elis!" he snapped, trying to direct the horse around the man who had planted himself right in the way.

"Are you going to help Lalli?" the dark-eyed man asked, his earnest face creased with worry. "There's something out there, isn't there? Shouldn't some more of us come?"

Emil grit his teeth. "I'm _going_ so that I can drag Lalli back to the camp, because I'm sure he's out there trying to buy us all time by holding whatever it is back. The rest of you should be here and ready to face whatever might be coming after us."

He pressed his heels into the nag's side, urging her on past the former classmate that he hardly remembered from his schooldays. Elis not only didn't take the hint—he went so far as to reach up and grab the horse's bridle, holding Emil in place. "You two might get overwhelmed alone, and the project can't afford to lose you both. Plenty of us would be willing to help. So let us come with you."

"Fine!" Emil practically shouted the word. "Bring as many as you want. But you don't have a horse, so good luck keeping up on foot. I'm not waiting."

He shouldn't be acting like this. He was in charge of the lives of all these men and women. He should be making sure the camp was in order and prepared before he rushed off.  _But why do I have lieutenants if I can't depend on them to take care of things in my stead? And Teemu knows how to handle his cleansers. And Tuuri is better than I am anyway at thinking things through and making strategies._

_But who else is going to go save Lalli?_

The truth that was clamoring inside him, which was perfectly obvious to him if it somehow wasn't yet to everyone else around him, was that he would choose Lalli's life over his position. He would choose Lalli over the dozens of lives he was responsible for here. But he knew that Lalli would give his own live to protect those same people. That self-sacrificing loyalty seemed to be as natural to Lalli as breathing—while Lalli was as necessary to Emil as the air itself.

"Lalli?" he asked of the closest Finnish cleansers. They knew what he was asking, and several arms lifted at once, all pointing off to the south. That was enough for Emil, and he kicked his heels into the old nag's side, driving her forward with a sharp cry.

 

 

 

Galloping alongside the railroad tracks, Emil's eyes scanned the ravaged land. Felled trees littered the area, stabbing upward at strange angles where they had fallen upon their brethren. Fitting his fingers into his mouth, he whistled a request for location: one low note, one longer and higher. He pulled his nag up short, not wanting to miss a response if were too faint to hear over the pounding hooves. There was only silence. He tried again, putting every last bit of air in his lungs into the signal. Still there was nothing. Did that mean that Lalli was too busy fighting whatever had caused him to first raise the alarm to respond? Or that he was already too late?

_It can't be. I would know. Somehow I would know if anything happened to Lalli. The sun couldn't just keep shining, the world couldn't just keep going on like before, if Lalli wasn't in it._

Emil strained his ears, hoping for some hint which direction he should go. Shouldn't there be some sound of a scuffle? There ought to be some sign that Lalli was somewhere fighting alone for all of their sakes. He was just lifting his arm to try another whistle when there was an unmistakable response—immediately eclipsed by someone shouting his name.

"Emil!"

"Damn it, Elis!" Emil spun around in the saddle, slashing through the air with a furious wave. "Be quiet!"

He'd heard the sound for just a moment. It had been a short signal, as it had to be. A quick scale that climbed from a low pitch to a high pitch in hardly a second. Its meaning: Stay away. Emil had no intention of obeying, but he hadn't been able to tell which direction it came from exactly with Elis shouting at the same time. He whistled again a request for location, but there was no answer. Lalli had given his message. He probably wouldn't signal again even if he could. He would know it would give Emil the chance to figure out where he was.

As the complete lack of response taunted him, Emil tried to ignore the noisy group of cleansers that were drawing up right behind his horse. They were a cacophany of heavy bootfalls, crackling twigs, and labored breathing. He glanced back again at them, dimly surprised to realize there were so many. At least a dozen had come running, as many Swedes as Finns, and they formed a clump around Elis. And  _he_ was still looking up at Emil expectantly.

_Expecting what exactly? How am I supposed to know where to go when you shouted over the only clue I had to go on?_

Emil managed to reign in his annoyance, and he bit out, "Lalli's still somewhere farther to the south. If you're coming, then let's go." Then he drove his nag onward with a sharp dig of his heels.

The cleansers jogged along behind Emil as he kept his horse to a contained trot. He wanted to push her as fast as the old girl could go, but he didn't have a direction to point her in—other than south. What if he went right past where Lalli might be fighting, without even realizing it? He was pretty sure the whistle he'd heard had come from the west, so he kept to that side of the tracks, straining his ears for any sound of a fight. But all he could hear was the small crowd beside him.

They shuffled onward down the line, the midday sun as cheery and false as a lie. The new cleansers were getting more spooked the farther they went without any hint of Lalli. Emil could tell it without even looking behind himself. Their fear rose off of them like a stench, and Emil felt the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. He didn't know what he would do without Lalli in his life. It was inconcievable. But what on earth would the rest of them do, without Lalli to rely on for this project?

"This way, right?"

The question jolted Emil out of his bleak thoughts. "What?"

Elis gestured farther to their right. "We should probably head farther west now, don't you think?"

"Farther west." Emil repeated stupidly.

"That way," the other cleanser said, holding his arm out and pointing away from the tracks. "Right?"

"I don't—did you hear something?"

Elis seemed confused by Emil's confusion. "Did I?" He seemed to be asking himself rather than Emil. Then he shook his head. "I don't know! But I know it's that way!"

There was no time. If Elis was right, then every moment they wasted was another that Lalli spent alone fighting off whatever had caused him to trigger a full withdrawal. But if he was wrong, they could waste even more time heading in the completely wrong direction. Emil twisted the reigns in his hands. "You're sure?"

Jaw clenched, Elis gave a jerky nod. "I'm sure."

"Then lead the way." Emil swallowed, praying to Lalli's gods even if he didn't know all their names that this was the right decision. "And, Elis? Run."

 

 

 

Emil's steady horse picked her way through the woods, spurred onward time and again by Emil's heels. He watched Elis dash and stumble through the brush in front of him, urging the old nag ahead every few steps if the other man put more than a couple meters between them. The train tracks were out of sight, and still there was no sign of Lalli. The sick lump of fear in Emil's throat had grown too big to swallow past. Part of the reason why he didn't dare open his mouth to suggest they should turn back was because he couldn't guarantee he wouldn't be ill if he did.

The trees stretched on in rows, but like so many of Sweden's forests, they stood like evenly space sentinels which you could see between for meters and meters. Emil strained his eyes as he scanned the area. Shouldn't they be able to see something of Lalli by now?

Kicking into the horse's sides once more, Emil cantered up to Elis. "You said you you were sure," he muttered. "If that was a mistake, Elis, just say so now and—"

"I'm sure!" Elis whirled to stare at him, black eyes burning. The look would have silenced Emil even if Elis hadn't gone on in a rush to demand, "Can't you feel it? It's  _awful_. There's something that way, and whatever it is, it's—it's—" He shuddered, his breath uneven. "If Lalli's out there, we've got to help him."

His conviction only made Emil feel more sick. He cursed as he dug his heels sharply into his mare's sides, and he cursed again each time the horse's powerful legs struck the ground. Every jolt drove him farther forward and away from the straggling crowd and the protests of those left behind. "Damn it. Damn it! _Damn it, Lalli!_ "   

And there—at last. A glimmer of motion between the still trees. It could have been a trick of the eye, but then there were more shadows flickering and moving. And then even more.  _How many are there?_ Emil leaned in, flattening himself against the nag to try to move even that much faster. A brief flash of ruddy light bloomed and then faded between the shadows.  _He's still fighting._

Emil galloped onward, though the rest of the cleansers had been left dozens of meters behind him. Now the shadows were beginning to take recognizable form. Wolves. Or something that had once been wolves. They were about the right size and roughly the right shape, but had a few too many legs. As he thundered closely, he saw their heavy jaws gaping open to reveal rows of glistening teeth, each about as large the small daggers the Finns carried with them wherever they went. And in the middle of the prowling, snarling pack was an equally feral sight: Lalli with his own teeth bared, blood staining his lips and smeared across his face, brandishing his rifle butt like a club as his horse kicked out at every passing beast, its eyes rolling and showing a wild rim of white as it screamed shrilly.

Shouting in wordless fury and fear, Emil barreled straight into the beasts, and his old nag, bless her, didn't balk or quail for a moment. They wheeled about, weaving between the slavering beasts and slamming into several with the solid flanks of the horse's hindquarters and sending them flying. She might have been old but his nag had been in service to the Cleansers' Corps for years. Without Emil even trying to direct her, she reared up and brought her front hooves down to smash the skull of the closest beast, then danced to the side to savage a second beast. Thighs burning, Emil did all he could stay atop the horse as she bucked.

As as soon all four hooves were back on the ground, she twisted about and galloped away from the horde—but only to break free from their midst, twist about, and come thundering back to try to bring devastation down once more. Snarls and roars filled Emil's ears, and his vision was a blurred wash of matted and rotten fur, the sweaty sheen of his horse's head, bright shafts of sunlight, and lightning flashes of Lalli's power. Emil couldn't even loose the axe from his back to try to add to the mayhem, needing both his hands to hold on, and he didn't dare jump off his nag. Getting trampled by one of the two horses seemed at least as likely as being overrun by the beasts.

Another sound filtered through the din, and Emil realized it was the shouts of other men. The cleansers had caught up at last, and they crashed into the melee with axes and knives catching the light as they slashed and lunged. With the reinforcements here to distract the beasts, Emil could pause long enough to find Lalli once more.

The mage turned and looked his way, his eyes narrowed to slits and already losing focus. Then he was tilting in the saddle, sliding almost slower than seemed possible as he pitched over toward the ground two meters below. And Emil was leaping from the back of own his horse, throwing himself across the space separating them and crashing to his knees to catch Lalli's dead weight before he landed in a heap upon the trampled and gore-splattered soil.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's ALIIIIIIVE!


	12. Chapter 12

_But you're miles away,_  
_You're breaking up, you're on your own_  
_It's hard to take,_  
_I need an hour just to say hello_  
_And I can't make the truth of this work out for you or me_

\- Scars, James Bay

 

 

EMIL

 

 

There was a silverly gleam beneath the heavy lids of Lalli's eyes, but they didn't even flutter as the mage's head lolled backward. Emil lowered the limp body gently to the ground then stood, pulling his axe out with his right hand as he struck the backside of Lalli's monstrous horse with a sharp slap from his left. The stallion reared and dashed away, and at least Emil was freed from having to worry about the creature stomping on Lalli where he was crumpled on the ground. Standing over the Finn protectively, Emil hefted his axe and surveyed the scene before him.

He hadn't had the chance to really process it when he'd first crashed into the battle, but now he saw how much Lalli had done on his own. Four of the beasts were either immobile or dragging themselves lamely across the ground thanks to Emil's mare, and the cleansers were now surrounding the rest, two or three humans to each of the former wolves. But the area was littered with unmoving corpses. There easily had to be seven or eight of them that Lalli had taken down first, though it was hard to tell amid the men and beasts spinning and scrabbling around Emil in a storm of motion, noise, and gore.

Whenever the fighting drew close to him, Emil swung his axe out to either land a blow or at least drive the foe back, his feet never straying more than a step away from Lalli's still form. One by one, the mix of Finnish and Swedish cleansers struck down the beasts. It was messy and and uncoordinated, several of the men and women falling as they were struck down by the infected creatures and, once or twice, by one another's wild swings. But most kept getting back up until, at last, the only movement left in the shadowed forest was the heaving of their chests as they all stared in disbelief at the carnage and tried to catch their breath.

 

 

 

In the end, no one had died and only two of the cleansers had been injured so badly that they couldn't walk back to the camp. Emil commanded that they be put on his old mare. Lalli had been hoisted up atop his black horse, arms and legs hanging limply along the stallion's flanks. It wouldn't suffer anyone else on its back, but it did allow Emil to lead it back toward the tracks.

The rest of the ragtag group was able to walk on their own two feet. There were twelve of them in total. Most had abrasions from the beasts' teeth and a couple had bleeding arms or hands wrapped in the shirts they'd stripped from their backs, but at least their legs still worked. They made it back to the railroad tracks powered by the adrenaline still flooding their systems, but even that began to fail once they were out of the woods. The illusion of safety which seemed promised by that iron and wood path, leading directly back to where help waited, made every remaining step till camp feel that much heavier.

No one spoke. The silence had hardly been broken once since their victory, crewmates mutely helping one another hold pressure on wounds or lending shoulders to lean on. Emil was aware in one part of his mind that he should say something to properly thank them for following after him, but he didn't know how to open his mouth yet without all his pent up fear and heartache spilling out of him. First he had to get Lalli back somewhere safe. Somewhere that they could rest, recover, and figure out what had to happen next.

When the first ripple of sound broke out in a murmuring wave, Emil lifted his head and looked along the tracks to see another group of cleansers coming south to meet them. They were about ten Finns, well outfitted with weapons held at the ready and not looking ready to lower them until they were sure any threat had passed. Emil managed to pry his dry lips apart to whistle the all clear, letting them know that the group was no longer under attack.

The Finns picked up the whistle and repeated it, carrying it back toward the rest of the camp in a piercing trill that would bring comfort to their countrymen and women. Their grim faces didn't ease, but then they were Finns. Still, they shouldered their weapons and hurried forward to help the stragglers limp back to camp. Emil's feet slowed, and the distance between him and the rest of the cleansers grew. Then he leaned his forehead against the sweat-drenched neck of the black stallion, his nose brushing against the familiar weave of Lalli's tunic as he tucked his face against the bony shoulder beneath it, and gave himself a few moments to fall quietly to pieces.

 

 

 

No regular work was done the rest of that day. They made it back to the camp, where the victorious cleansers were welcomed by their friends with shouts and laughter. Relieved chatter sprung up again almost as quickly as the panic had earlier spread, while the camp doctor bustled about triaging the injured and then beginning to clean and bind wounds. Lalli remained unresponsive, but Emil knew by now not to panic over such a spell. He knew as well as any Finn that expending too much spiritual power in one go took the very spirit from a mage, and that nothing but time could bring them back.

So when the doctor said something about wanting to send Lalli down to the hospital in Mora, Emil insisted that she should see to the other injured cleansers instead. He made Lalli comfortable himself, washing the blood from his face and hands and tucking a blanket carefully around him, all the way up to his pointy chin. Tuuri wasted no time finding them and she crouched beside Emil, peering down at her cousin with an unhappy but accustomed air. Once she was there, Emil made himself leave Lalli to address the rest of the cleansers. There were things he could and should do to help the others. Lalli was beyond his reach at the moment.

For an hour, Emil had let himself abandon his duty, thinking only about saving Lalli, but he still had a job to do. So the rest of the afternoon was spent directing small groups out to collect all of the equipment that had been left scattered along the line. They got things back in order to resume work the next day, in whatever way they could. Wherever he was, Emil reassured the young Swedes around him. This sort of thing happened in the field, but the fact that they'd come through it without a single loss was an incredible success. They were still doing great and these kinds of little hiccups were to be expected. Nothing out of the order.

He met with Teemu, pulling Tuuri away from Lalli's side as well to help interpret, and they worked through their plans for how they would tackle the next day, assuming Lalli wouldn't be up or capable of watching the line even if he were. Together they reviewed the traditional Swedish workflow until Teemu knew its ins and outs as well as Emil himself did. Then Emil stood beside Teemu and Tuuri as they explained it to the gathered crowd at dinner, making sure that everyone was ready for what would come on the morrow.

When the sun had fallen and the camp was settled, though, when Emil had walked the camp and made sure everyone else was asleep and safe, he let himself give in once more to personal desires. He slept that night beside Lalli on the odd chance that the mage might come back to himself sometime during the night. But when Lalli was still unconscious the next morning, Emil made himself sit up and tuck the blanket they'd been sharing—still warm from his own body heat—tighter around Lalli, then walk away.

He and the crew headed out into the field to keep work going. Emil hadn't been the only one unhappy about that fact. The younger Swedes didn't only want Lalli on his feet again to watch their own backs. They also seemed to be genuinely worried about him, coming by singly or in pairs to ask Emil if the mage was going to be all right. 

In the days that followed, progress was slowed to a fraction of what they'd become accustomed to. Without Lalli, they could only creep up along Helvetesfallet by using the traditional Swedish sytem: with one cleanser in each trio standing watch in turns while the other two kept sawing, hacking, and sweating under the summer sun. It reduced their manpower by a third when you looked at the numbers alone, but in practice it was even worse than that. The cleansers spooked easily at any sign of trouble, and it was hard to say who was worse: the inexperienced Swedes who were still getting used to working in uncleansed areas, or the visiting Finns who were unaccustomed to working without alert mages on watch. The evening shifts had also stopped, by unspoken agreement, without Lalli to warn them of any dangers that could lurk in the long shadows of night's gathering dark.

Without Lalli. Emil had been forced to say the words dozens of times. _Without Lalli, we've got no choice but to use the trio system. Without Lalli, you'll all have to be on alert. Without Lalli, it's too risky to spread so far along the line._

Then there had been the words he'd only thought to himself. _Without Lalli, this project is going to fail. Without Lalli, we're never going to make it to Sveg on time. Without Lalli, I don't even want to be doing this._

Throughout all of this Lalli himself had remained unconscious, carted slowly north in one of the luggage wagons along with the tents and other supplies as the crew crept on at their reduced pace. After two whole days in a comatose state, everyone wondering when Lalli would wake up, Emil finally returned to camp one evening to learn that he had.

He knew it as soon as he saw Tuuri waiting for him at the edge of camp at the end of the day, bouncing on the balls of her feet and waving her arms excitedly. He didn't even wait for the words, jogging up to her and asking, "Where is he? At the sick bay?"

Tuuri nodded and called after him as he took off with no more than a quick hand on her shoulder. "Try to convince him to take tomorrow off, too, if you can!"

The regret that he'd hadn't been there the moment Lalli had opened his eyes—that Lalli would have woken up alone without a hint that anyone had been pining for him every moment he spent asleep—was real. But it was less important than the fact that finally Lalli was awake now.

Emil slid to a stop at the sick bay, which was what they'd dubbed the area that was set up each day for those recovering from relatively minor injuries of one sort of another. The two cleansers who had come back to the camp on the back of his horse—one with a broken ankle and the other with a large gash on his thigh that had needed a large number stitches to keep from gaping open—had been sent down to the Mora to recover at the military hospital there. Those who needed small wounds dressed, though, or other daily injuries attended to, were left here. And here, sitting up and looking about as happy as a wet cat, was Lalli.

He glanced up at the noise and when he saw Emil, his sour expression flickered for a moment. He took in Emil's desheveled state, eyes from his head to feet then back up again. "You look like a mess."

His voice was raspy, and Emil wondered if it was just disuse or if Lalli had been been straining it with ceaseless spells as he'd tried to keep the wolf beasts at bay. Sinking down to sit beside the other man, Emil tried to quip, "Some of have been busy working, you know." He reached out to tuck Lalli's loose hair back behind his ear, probably utterly failing to look like a professional captain worried about a member of his crew. "Not that you'll be. Tuuri's already told me to remind you that you're on bed rest at least another day."

There were a couple moments of silence between them, as Lalli looked down at his hands where they rested on his thighs. With eyes still averted, he asked, "Alone?"

Emil wasn't sure if it was an accusation or a simple question, and he didn't have the confidence to respond in the teasing way he might have weeks ago. He pulled his hand back from that pale head and replied in a subdued tone, "Afraid so. We're still trying to make as much progress as we can. I wish I could keep you company all day, but...take some time to rest now. Then you can come back to work with the rest of us."

Lalli somehow grew even more still, moving away from Emil without actually moving an inch. He'd said the wrong thing. He should have started out by telling Lalli how much he wanted to stay alone with him in their tent for the next 24 hours or 24 months. Or how he'd worked himself to the bone the past two days, never rotating out onto watch with his trios because he knew that if he stopped swinging his axe, stopped moving and let his mind wander, it would have been unbearable to keep himself away from Lalli's side. But he hadn't said any of those things.

"Rest so you can come back to me," he croaked, too late. "Not the crew. Not the project. Could you do that?" He could tell by that Lalli was listening, weighing his words. "I need you."

Lalli thawed long enough to give a brief nod. Eyes sliding away to the side, he asked shortly, "Is there anything to eat around here? I haven't eaten in nearly three days."

Emil scrambled to his feet, glad to have something he could do to help—and a way out of the awkward moment they'd found themselved mired in. He spoke in a rush. "Of course! I'll go get something from the cooks. I'm sure they have dinner ready by now. I'll bring you something."

He didn't wait for any response before he hurried away. His mind was roiling as he thought up and rejected different ideas of what he ought to say when he got back to Lalli's side. It had gotten so easy for that unhappy distance to spring up between them now. All it took was one wrong word. And it was becoming harder and harder each time to find the right words to bridge it.

In his distracted state, he didn't pay any attention to the others making their way toward the food line until his shoulder slammed into someone walking in the opposite direction, head also down and mind apparently as distant as Emil's was. Emil stumbled back and blinked, seeing the other cleanser for the first time. "Matias!"

The boy's hand flew to the bandages wrapped around his forehead and he winced as though his head pained him. Emil steadied him with a hand. "Sorry about that. Are you all right?"

Matias nodded, swallowing nervously. He'd been perpetually flustered since about the first moment Emil had met him, outside the northern gate out of Orsa and worried that he'd be punished for letting Lalli out alone into the wilderness beyond the fences. But his timid manner had grown even worse since that first town cleansing had gone wrong and he'd taken the large gash that now marred his face.

"Off to see the doctor?" Emil asked. "Going to get those bandages off soon?" Even as nervous as the younger cleanser was, talking to him was easier than talking to Lalli at the moment, though it shouldn't have been so.

Nodding again, Matias finally managed to say a few words. "She said maybe next week." Then he looked up and asked, "Is it true that...Lalli's awake?"

Word must have spread quickly around the camp. Emil nodded more slowly, wondering if he should find some nice way to try to keep Matias from going to the sick bay just now. Lalli had been smarting about "letting" Matias get injured since it had happened. The incident had only made the mage even more singleminded in his efforts to keep every last cleanser safe, no matter what it took. Emil had seen how he avoided looking at that bandaged face whenever he could, even if no one else might notice.

Emil had to find away to convince Lalli to stop pushing himself so hard, and being confronted by Matias's scars right before he did would probably doom whatever slim chances he had at success.

"W-would it be all right if I talked to him?"

Emil glanced up at the earnest face in front of him, crisscrossed by white gauze. Matias had given him the opening, so did he dare take it? Emil decided he did.

"Actually," Emil stretched the word out, watching Matias to see how he reacted, "it's pretty important that he gets rest now if we want him back up on his feet. Was there something you needed to talk to him about it urgently, or could it wait?"

The sandy-haired cleanser wilted, quite as Emil had expected. He felt like he'd kicked a small animal. Which was especially ironic considering that Matias was a head taller than he was. Even with his large lanky frame, there was something childlike about the young man that made it hard to get too annoyed at his nervous manner. Emil made himself smile encouragingly as he asked, "You can always talk to me, if it would help?"

Matias shoved his hands in his pockets, but Emil could still tell that he had them balled up tightly. "I just wanted to apologize to him."

"You...wanted to apologize to  _him?_ " Emil repeated dumbly. "Did you do something to him?"

"No! I mean, I hope not." Matias' shoulders hunched even higher. "But maybe? I never got the chance to talk to him after...after Tallhed. And I wanted him to know that I-I don't think it was his fault." Stumbling over his words, they were barely out of the young man's mouth before he tried to snatch them back. "That's not—of course it's not his fault. I didn't mean to suggest that anyone was saying it was his fault. It was my fault. I should've known better..."

He trailed off and Emil realized he needed to say something. Giving Matias an awkward pat on the shoulder, he countered, "How could you have known better? It was your first time in the field!"

Matias shook his head glumly. "No. I had a bad feeling. I should've listened to my gut."

"Well, you were nervous!" Emil retorted. He looked over the cleanser's shoulder toward the cooks' station where they were doling out dinner. His mind was already far from whatever it was Matias was saying. Lalli was waiting for him to bring something back. In his imagination, Emil had already arrived back with a dish full of steaming food that would inspire Lalli to smile and remember how good things had been before this project.

Then the words sank in, and it was like a bell ringing in his ears.  _A bad feeling_. It reminded him of what Elis had said when they'd gone after Lalli, and suddenly he had an idea what he should say to the mage.

Emil dragged his gaze back to Matias, and he peered straight into those worried brown eyes. "You did a great job out there for your first time, Matias. I want you to know that. Don't beat yourself up over what happened out there, or worry about what you could have maybe done different. You did what you could, and you're here to tell the tale." That should be enough for now. "So talk to Lalli about it later, when both of you have had a bit of time to heal up a bit more. But maybe let him rest a bit more tonight. All right?"

With one last clap on the shoulder, Emil managed to disentangle himself without even knowing what he was saying. Those empty reassurances didn't matter. What mattered was that he find a way to convince Lalli to listen to him. Then everything would sort itself out. Lalli would recover, but to keep him on the mend, he would need food and rest and—hopefully, if he agreed—even Emil himself.


End file.
